Cabaret

Tonight's lineup on TCM is a night of movies directed by Bob Fosse. I see that Cabaret is on at 1:00 AM. Having recorded it the last time it was on TCM, I decided to watch it to do a post on now.

Joel Grey plays the Master of Ceremonies (no real name given), who runs the show in full stage make-up and even sings some of the songs at the Kit Kat Club, a decadent cabaret in Weimar-era Berlin. Among the entertainers who perform there from time to time is Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), an American abroad who lives a bohemian life and rooms in a boarding house since she's apparently not making enough to do well.

One day, Sally meets Brian Roberts (Michael York), a British scholar who's doing work on his doctorate that's taken him to Berlin; he's hoping to go back to Britain after finishing and becoming a professor at Oxford or Cambridge. He's also gay (or maybe bisexual by convenience), telling Sally at one point that he's slept with three women before meeting her and that it's always ended disastrously. Before all that, however, Sally helps Brian get a room in the house where she lives, as well as clients to whom he teaches English.

This brings Brian and Sally into contact with a bunch of people, of whom the most notable for our story are wealthy Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem), Jewish woman Natalia Landauer (Marisa Berenson), and Protestant with a secret to hide Fritz Wendel (Fritz Wepper). The last two are important because this being early 1930s Weimar Germany, the rise of the Nazis isn't far behind, and is a theme that permeates the movie. The Nazis attack the Landauer family, while Fritz loves Natalia and would like to marry her, but to do that he's going to have to come clean and admit that he was born Jewish and is passing himself off as a Protestant to escape the anti-semitism.

As for Max, he invites Sally and Brian to a weekend at his three, and of the three possible sexual pairings between the threesome, all three happen. It results in Sally getting pregnant and not knowing who the father is. Meanwhile, the Kit Kat Club goes on, seemingly in its own little world....

Cabaret won a bunch of Oscars, and it's easy to see why. The production design is excellent; the story is quite good, and Liza Minnelli shows she could act, winning an Oscar for her role. Joel Grey won a Supporting Actor Oscar, for a role that in many ways is not a dramatic role, in the sense that his MC is not really involved with any of the plot goings on in the world outside the Kit Kat Club. The songs, however, engage in increasingly pointed if subtle commentary on what's taking place in Weimar Berlin, often shown by intercutting the numbers with the outside action.

The songs, however, might be a problem for some viewers. That sort of cabaret-style music is definitely an acquired taste, and there were points in the movie where a musical number came up and it felt as it was bringing the movie to a screeching halt. It's somewhat like a Kathryn Grayson or Jeannette MacDonald movie in that yes, both of those singers are talented, but you might have a visceral dislike for that style of music.

If you haven't seen Cabaret before, it's definitely worth a watch. It's also available on Blu-ray should you miss tonight's TCM airing.