"Cabaret" explores some of the same kinky territory celebrated in Visconti's "The Damned." Both movies share the general idea that the rise of the Nazi party in Germany was accompanied by a rise in bisexuality, homosexuality, sadomasochism, and assorted other activities. Taken as a generalization about a national movement, this is certainly extreme oversimplification. But taken as one approach to the darker recesses of Nazism, it may come pretty close to the mark. The Nazi gimmicks like boots and leather and muscles and racial superiority and outdoor rallies and Aryan comradeship offered an array of machismo-for-rent that had (and has) a special appeal to some kinds of impotent people.
Full Movie Cabaret
"Cabaret" is about people like that, and it takes place largely in a specific Berlin cabaret, circa 1930, in which decadence and sexual ambiguity were just part of the ambience (like the women mud-wrestlers who appeared between acts). This is no ordinary musical. Part of its success comes because it doesn't fall for the old cliché that musicals have to make you happy. Instead of cheapening the movie version by lightening its load of despair, director Bob Fosse has gone right to the bleak heart of the material and stayed there well enough to win an Academy Award for Best Director.
The story concerns one of the more famous literary inventions of the century, Sally Bowles, who first came to life in the late Christopher Isherwood's 'Berlin Stories,' and then appeared in the play and movie 'I Am a Camera' before returning to the stage in this musical, and then making it into the movies a second time -- a modern record, matched only by Eliza Doolittle, I'd say.
Sally is brought magnificently to the screen in an Oscar-winning performance by Liza Minnelli, who plays her as a girl who's bought what the cabaret is selling. To her, the point is to laugh and sing and live forever in the moment; to refuse to take things seriously -- even Nazism -- and to relate with people only up to a certain point. She is capable of warmth and emotion, but a lot of it is theatrical, and when the chips are down she's as decadent as the "divinely decadent" dark fingernail polish she flaunts.
Liza Minnelli plays Sally Bowles so well and fully that it doesn't matter how well she sings and dances, if you see what I mean. In several musical numbers (including the stunning finale "Cabaret" number), Liza demonstrates unmistakably that she's one of the great musical performers of our time. But the heartlessness and nihilism of the character is still there, all the time, even while we're being supremely entertained.
Sally gets involved in a triangular relationship with a young English language teacher (Michael York) and a young baron (Helmut Griem), and if this particular triangle didn't exist in the stage version, that doesn't matter. It helps define the movie's whole feel of moral anarchy, and it is underlined by the sheer desperation in the cabaret itself.
Yes, I know, the "former Yugoslavia,'' as we now wistfully refer to it, contains beauty and greatness. But what is going on there now, the film argues, is ugliness. The dark side has taken over and decent citizens on both sides flee for their lives, or choose the lesser of evils. It's hard at times to tell which side the characters are on, a New York critic complains. Yes, this film might reply, but what difference does it make? They're all doomed.
The movie's device is a series of interlocking, self-contained stories. Some of the same characters turn up from time to time, like haunting reminders. After a while many of the dominant males seem to blur together into one composite: An alcoholic middle-aged man with an absurd mustache, lurching through the world killing, vomiting, urinating, bleeding, belching, swearing and entertaining himself by terrorizing women. (In his general physical appearance, this composite is not unlike Slobodan Milosevic.) Some of the episodes end with surprises--not because we don't see them coming, but because we can't believe that the characters are complete monsters. We are inevitably disappointed: None of the men in this movie is nice, except for a few bewildered older men (one of whom crushes a lout's skull and then cradles him, sobbing, "my boy, my boy''). Small events escalate into exercises in terror, and the men in the film seem to be consumed by violence. None of the killings in the film is overtly political; "Cabaret Balkan'' seems to argue that monstrous behavior is so ingrained in a sick culture that ethnic cleansing is just an organized form of everyday behavior.
The buried argument of "Cabaret Balkan'' seems to be that violence and macho sexual insecurity are closely linked. I was reminded of "Savior'' (1998), the film where Dennis Quaid plays a mercenary fighting for the Serbs; he finds himself protecting a woman who has been raped, and whose father and brother want to kill her--because, you see, she has therefore brought dishonor on her family. It is not a crime to rape, but to be raped. Such diseased values, "Cabaret Balkan'' seems to suggest, almost inevitably lead to savagery, and indeed the intimidation of women is the primary way the men in this movie express their manhood.
Amazingly, "Cabaret Balkan'' is an enormous hit in its homeland, no doubt among the many good citizens who are fed up. Societies can rip themselves to pieces only so long before they are forced to wonder how their values could possibly survive the cost of fighting for them. When war leaves no ideals worth defending, there is only the consolation of depriving the other side of any shreds of remaining standards. Of all the movies about all the tragic places where old hatreds fester over ethnic, racial and religious animosity, this is the angriest, and therefore possibly the bravest.
Brian Roberts, a young, fresh-faced British student at Cambridge University, arrives in Berlin in 1931 to complete his studies in German. He has little money but plans to teach English in order to support himself, and to live very frugally. With this in mind he takes a room at a cheap and cheerful boarding house, where he meets Sally Bowles, a Bohemian and rather wild young cabaret singer at the Kit Kat Klub. Brian is as reserved as Sally is flamboyant. She is attracted to him but suspects that he is gay. He tells her that his three previous attempts with women have been a failure, but after the two become friends, and subsequently lovers, Sally concludes that his prior failures were not about his sexuality at all; they must have been the wrong women.
When Sally discovers that she is pregnant, Brian offers to take her back to Cambridge with him. At first she finds the idea appealing, but after Brian seems to become distant and disinterested, she begins to rethink everything, unable to picture herself as a faculty wife with nothing to do. She also realizes that she is not ready to be a mother and has an abortion. She and Brian come to an understanding, and he returns to Britain whilst she remains behind in Berlin. She throws herself into life at the Kit Kat Klub, but in the final shot of the movie we see men in Nazi uniforms in the front row of the club.
Whilst Sally and Brian are working through their lives, two other members of their inner circle, Frittz Wendel, a German Jew passing himself off as a Christian, and Natalia Landauer, a rich Jewish heiress, are also navigating their relationship. Fritz's main goal in life is to become a gigolo and avoid gainful employment so as soon as he meets Natalia he is attracted to her wealth. He later genuinely falls in love with her but unfortunately Natalia is suspicious of his motives. After Sally gives Fritz some much-needed advice, he manages to assuage Natalia's suspicions and she reciprocates his feelings. However, in order to get her parents' approval for their marriage, Fritz must admit that he is actually Jewish. This is very dangerous because of the rising Nazi regime who are already treating Jewish citizens differently and badly. The rise of the regime is a sub-plot in the movie, and as it proceeds there are more and more characters in Nazi uniforms, culminating in the final scene with Nazi officers in the front row of the Kit Kat Klub.
Parents need to know that this Academy-Award-winning musical is chock full of sexual innuendo and frank talk about casual sex, both hetero- and homosexual. Main characters smoke and drink throughout the film while living decadent, if impoverished, lives. The movie is set against the backdrop of the Nazis' rise to power in Germany, with a couple scenes of violence related to Nazi conflicts. The main character has an abortion.
When Brian Roberts (Michael York) arrives in 1931 Berlin he meets Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), a cabaret singer with an over-the-top personality. She seduces him into her world, connecting him with work and offering herself sexually to him. When he refuses, implying that he is gay, they continue to build a fun-loving friendship that eventually turns into a complicated three-way relationship with a wealthy playboy. All the while, Sally overcompensates for her fragile emotional state by building her hopes for a career as an actress. These hopes are often based on associations with powerful men she meets at the Kit Kat Klub, but usually end in disappointment. When Sally finds out she's pregnant, Brian offers to marry her, but she realizes their fantasy of a conventional life won't work. The film is set against the backdrop of rising Nazi power in Germany, which adds to the tension in the film.
This 1972 film won eight Academy Awards and many other accolades for its dynamic presentation of the heartbreaking tale of an emotionally scarred young woman. This tale is interspersed with drop-dead gorgeous costumes, brilliant choreography, and songs performed by Minnelli and others. The film perfectly captures the anxiety of the pre-WWII era, where desperate times meant living life to the fullest, even if it's an exhausting and emotionally draining spectacle. It's not likely to appeal to most kids, although teens involved in theater may be interested. 2ff7e9595c
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