Cabaret (1972 film)

The character of Sally Bowles was based upon Jean Ross, a British cabaret singer with whom Isherwood lived as a room-mate in Weimar-era Berlin.

The 1972 film was based upon Christopher Isherwood's semi-autobiographical stories.[15] In 1929–1930, Isherwood relocated to Weimar Berlin in order to pursue life as an openly gay man and to enjoy the city's gay nightlife.[16] Members of Isherwood's Berlin social circle included authors W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Paul Bowles, and Jean Ross.[17][18]^:125-130 While in Berlin, Isherwood shared lodgings with Ross, a British cabaret singer and aspiring film actress from a wealthy Anglo-Scottish family.[19][15] While rooming with Isherwood at Nollendorfstrasse 17 in Schöneberg,[19][15] Ross became pregnant with the child of jazz pianist (and later actor) Peter van Eyck.[19][15] Following Eycke's unannounced departure from Germany, Ross underwent an abortion legally authorized by Isherwood who pretended to be her heterosexual impregnator.[19][20][21][15]

As the political situation rapidly deteriorated in the poverty-stricken country, Ross, Isherwood, Spender, and other British nationals realized that they must leave Germany.[18]^:129 "There was a sensation of doom to be felt in the Berlin streets," Spender recalled.[18]^:129 By the time the Nazi Party had seized power in the July 1932 elections, Isherwood, Ross, Spender, and others had fled Berlin and returned to southern England.[19][15] Many of the Berlin cabaret denizens befriended by Isherwood would later flee abroad[22]^:164–166 or die in labor camps.[22]^{:150, 297}[23]^:74–81 These factual events served as the genesis for a 1937 short story by Isherwood entitled Sally Bowles which was later adapted into the 1955 film I Am a Camera and the 1966 Cabaret musical.[21][24]

In July 1968, Cinerama made a verbal agreement to make a film version of the 1966 Broadway musical but pulled out in February 1969.[7][25][26] In May 1969, Allied Artists paid a company record $1.5 million for the film rights and planned a company record budget.[7][25][26] The cost of $4,570,000 was split evenly with ABC Pictures.[7][26][1]

Bob Fosse was eager to direct the film after the box office failure of Sweet Charity (1969).

In 1971, Bob Fosse learned through Harold Prince, director of the original Broadway production, that Cy Feuer was producing a film adaptation of Cabaret through ABC Pictures and Allied Artists.[7] This was the first film produced in the revival of Allied Artists. Determined to direct the film, Fosse begged Feuer to hire him.[7] However, Fosse had previously directed the unsuccessful film adaptation of Sweet Charity, a box office failure which made chief executives Manny Wolf and Marty Baum reluctant to hire him.[7] Wolf and Baum preferred a more renowned or established director such as Billy Wilder, Joseph L. Mankiewicz or Gene Kelly.[7][27]^:134

Eager to hire Fosse, Feuer appealed to the studio heads, citing Fosse's talent for staging and shooting musical numbers, adding that if inordinate attention was given to filming the book scenes at the expense of the musical numbers, the whole film could fail. Fosse ultimately was hired. Over the next months, Fosse met with previously hired screenwriter Jay Presson Allen to discuss the screenplay.[27]^:136-139

As production neared, Fosse became increasingly dissatisfied with Allen's script which was based on Joe Masteroff's original book of the stage version. Fosse hired Hugh Wheeler to rewrite and revise Allen's work.[27]^:136-139 Wheeler was referred to as a "research consultant," while Allen retained screenwriting credit. Wheeler, a friend of Christopher Isherwood,[28] knew that Isherwood had been critical of the stage musical due to its bowdlerizations of his material.[28] Wheeler went back to Isherwood's original stories in order to ensure a more faithful adaptation of the source material. In particular, Wheeler restored the subplot about the gigolo and the Jewish heiress. Wheeler also drew on gay author Christopher Isherwood's openness about his homosexuality to make the leading male character a bisexual man "rather than the heterosexual as he had been in the stage musical."[27]^:139

Fosse decided to increase the focus on the Kit Kat Klub, where Sally performs, as a metaphor for the decadence of Germany in the 1930s by eliminating all but one of the musical numbers performed outside the club. The only remaining outside number is "Tomorrow Belongs to Me",[8] a folk song rendered spontaneously by patrons at an open-air café in one of the film's most effective scenes.[5]^:609 In addition, the show's original songwriters Kander and Ebb wrote two new songs, "Mein Herr", "Money", and incorporated "Maybe This Time", a song they had composed in 1964 and first sung by Kaye Ballard.[29]

Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles (left) in the 1972 film. Minnelli modeled the character's appearance upon Louise Brooks (right), an American actress who was famous in 1930s Weimar Germany.[27]^:142

Feuer had cast Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles and Joel Grey (reprising his stage role) long before Fosse was attached to the project. Fosse was given the option of using Grey as Master of Ceremonies or walking away from the production.[27]^:147-148 Fosse hired Michael York as Sally Bowles's bisexual love interest, a casting choice which Minnelli initially believed was incorrect until she performed with him.[27]^:146 Several smaller roles, as well as the remaining four dancers in the film, eventually were cast in Germany.

Minnelli had auditioned to play Sally in the original Broadway production but was deemed too inexperienced at the time, even though she had already won Broadway's Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. By the time Cabaret reached the screen, however, Minnelli was a film star having won an Oscar nomination as the emotionally damaged college student in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969).

For her performance as Sally in the film, Minnelli reinterpreted the character and—at the explicit suggestion of her father stage director Vincente Minnelli[30]—she deliberately imitated film actress Louise Brooks, a flapper icon and sex symbol of the Jazz Age.[30][27]^:142 Brooks, much like the character of Sally Bowles in the film, was an aspiring actress and American expat who temporarily moved to Weimar Berlin in search of international stardom.[27]^:139 Minnelli later recalled:

"I went to my father and asked him, 'What can you tell me about 1930s glamour? Should I be emulating Marlene Dietrich or something?' And he said 'No, study everything you can about Louise Brooks.'"[30]

In particular, Minnelli drew upon Brooks' "Lulu makeup and helmet-like coiffure."[27]^:142 For the meeting between Sally Bowles and Brian Roberts, Minnelli modeled her movements and demeanor upon Brooks; in particular, the scene in Pandora's Box (1929) where Brooks' carefree character of Lulu is first introduced.[27] Ultimately, Minnelli would win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Sally Bowles.[31]

Fosse and Feuer traveled to West Germany, where producers chose to shoot the film, in order to finish assembling the film crew. During this time, Fosse highly recommended Robert L. Surtees for cinematographer, but Feuer and the top executives saw Surtees's work on Sweet Charity as one of the film's many artistic problems. Producers eventually chose British cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth.[27]^{:138, 149} Designers Rolf Zehetbauer, Hans Jürgen Kiebach and Herbert Strabel served as production designers. Charlotte Flemming designed costumes.[27]^:205 Fosse dancer Kathryn Doby, Louise Quick and John Sharpe were brought on as Fosse's dance aides.

Rehearsals and filming took place entirely in West Germany. For reasons of economy, indoor scenes were shot at the Bavaria Film Studios in Grünwald,[27]^:143 outside Munich.[7][27]^:146 Location shooting took place in and around Munich and West Berlin, and in Schleswig-Holstein and Saxony . Editing was done in Los Angeles before the eventual theatrical release in February 1972.

Although the songs throughout the film allude to and advance the narrative, every song except "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" is executed in the context of a Kit Kat Klub performance.[4][8] The voice heard on the radio reading the news throughout the film in German was that of associate producer Harold Nebenzal, whose father Seymour Nebenzahl produced such notable Weimar films as M (1931), Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), and Threepenny Opera (1931).

Roger Ebert gave a positive review in January 1972, saying: "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."[10]

A Variety staff critic appraised the film in December 1971: "The film version of the 1966 John Kander-Fred Ebb Broadway musical Cabaret is most unusual: it is literate, bawdy, sophisticated, sensual, cynical, heart-warming, and disturbingly thought-provoking. Liza Minnelli heads a strong cast. Bob Fosse's generally excellent direction recreates the milieu of Germany some 40 years ago."[3]

Roger Greenspun of The New York Times wrote in February 1972 that "Cabaret is one of those immensely gratifying imperfect works in which from beginning to end you can literally feel a movie coming to life."[6] Likewise, Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote a review that same month in which she applauded the film:

"A great movie musical. Taking its form from political cabaret, it's a satire of temptations. In a prodigious balancing act, Bob Fosse, the choreographer-director, keeps the period—Berlin, 1931—at a cool distance. We see the decadence as garish and sleazy; yet we also see the animal energy in it—everything seems to become sexualized. The movie does not exploit decadence; rather, it gives it its due. With Joel Grey as our devil-doll host—the master of ceremonies—and Liza Minnelli (in her first singing role on the screen) as exuberant, corruptible Sally Bowles, chasing after the life of a headliner no matter what; Minnelli has such gaiety and electricity that she becomes a star before our eyes."[11]

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Christopher Isherwood in 1938. He disliked the 1972 film as he felt it depicted homosexuality in a negative light.[22]^:63

Although Cabaret (1972) was well-received by film critics upon its release,[6][10][3][11] author Christopher Isherwood and other persons upon whom the film's characters were based were less receptive towards the cinematic adaptation.[17][22]^:63 Isherwood himself was critical of the 1972 film due to what he perceived as its negative portrayal of homosexuality:

"In the film of Cabaret, the male lead is called Brian Roberts. He is a bisexual Englishman; he has an affair with Sally and, later, with one of Sally's lovers, a German baron.... Brian's homosexual tendency is treated as an indecent but comic weakness to be snickered at, like bed-wetting."[22]^:63

Similarly, Isherwood's friend Jean Ross—upon whom the character of Sally Bowles was based[37]^:26—was ambivalent about the film.[38]^:70 She felt the depiction of 1930s Berlin "was quite, quite different" from reality.[39]^:33–34 Nevertheless, she conceded that the depiction of their social circle of British expatriates as pleasure-seeking libertines was accurate: "We were all utterly against the bourgeois standards of our parents' generation. That's what took us to [Weimar-era] Berlin. The climate was freer there."[39]^:33–34 Such ambivalence towards Cabaret (1972) was not unique among Isherwood's circle.[17] The poet Stephen Spender lamented how Cabaret (1972) glossed over Weimar Berlin's crushing poverty:

"There is not a single meal, or club, in the movie Cabaret, that Christopher [Isherwood] and I could have afforded [in 1931]. What we mostly knew was the Berlin of poverty, unemployment, political demonstrations and street fighting between forces of the extreme left and the extreme right."[17]

Both Spender and Ross contended that the 1972 film and 1966 Broadway musical deleteriously glamorized the harsh realities of the 1930s Weimar era.[17][39]^:33–34

In 2002, Jamie Russell of the BBC wrote that the film was "the first musical ever to be given an X certificate, Bob Fosse's Cabaret launched Liza Minnelli into Hollywood superstardom and re-invented the musical for the Age of Aquarius."[4] In 2013, film critic Peter Bradshaw listed Cabaret at number one on his list of "Top 10 musicals", describing it as "satanically catchy, terrifyingly seductive ... directed and choreographed with electric style by Bob Fosse ... Cabaret is drenched in the sexiest kind of cynicism and decadent despair."[40]

Although less explicit compared with other films made in the 1970s, Cabaret dealt explicitly with topics like corruption, sexual ambiguity, false dreams, and Nazism. Tim Dirks at Filmsite.org notes: "The sexually-charged, semi-controversial, kinky musical was the first one ever to be given an X rating (although later re-rated) with its numerous sexual flings and hedonistic club life. There was considerable sexual innuendo, profanity, casual sex talk (homosexual and heterosexual), some evidence of anti-Semitism, and even an abortion in the film."[41] It was also rated X in the UK and later re-rated as 15.[4][42]

On the topic of Nazism, there was little consensus among critics about the possibly fascist implications of the film and play. However, critic Steven Belletto wrote a critique of Cabaret in the Criticism journal, published by Wayne State University Press, in which he highlighted the anti-fascist themes in the film present both within and outside of the musical acts. According to Belletto, "despite the ways that the film has been understood by a variety of critics, [Cabaret] rejects the logic of fascist certainty by staging various numbers committed to irony and ambiguity."[33]

The "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" scene was controversial, with Kander and Ebb, both of whom were Jews, sometimes being wrongly accused of using a historical Nazi song.[43] According to a November 1976 Variety article, the film was censored in West Berlin when it was first released there theatrically, with the sequence featuring the Hitler Youth singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" having been deleted.[7] This elimination was made "because of the feeling that it might stir up resentments in the audience by showing the sympathizers for the Nazi movement during the '30s."[7] The sequence was restored, however, when the film was shown on West German television on November 7, 1976.[7]

Another topic of discussion was the song "If You Could See Her",[5]^:610 which closed with the line: "If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn't look Jewish at all." The point of the song was showing anti-Semitism as it begins to run rampant in Berlin, but there were a number of Jewish groups who interpreted the lyrics differently.[44][5]^:625

Cabaret earned a total of 10 Academy Award nominations (winning 8 of them) and holds the record for most Academy Awards won by a film which did not win the Academy Award for Best Picture.[7][45]

Shortly before the Academy Awards, Bob Fosse won 2 Tony Awards for directing and choreographing Pippin, his biggest stage hit to date. Months later, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for choreographing and directing Liza Minnelli's television special Liza with a Z, he became the first director to win all three awards in one year.

Minnelli reprised the character of Sally Bowles for an encore performance in the 1973 television special, Liza with a Z, also directed by Bob Fosse.

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs
  • Cabaret – No. 18
• AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals – No. 5
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – No. 63

Inducted into the National Film Registry in 1995 among a list of 25 Films that year.[12]

The film was first released to DVD in 1998. There have been subsequent releases in 2003, 2008, and 2012. The film's international ancillary distribution rights are owned by ABC (now part of The Walt Disney Company), while Warner Bros. (which acquired the film as part of its purchase of Lorimar Productions, which had previously acquired the film library of Allied Artists) has domestic distribution rights.

In April 2012, Warner unveiled a new restoration of the film at the TCM Classic Film Festival.[53][54][55] A DigiBook edition was later released on Blu-ray on February 5, 2013.[56] Before this restoration, Cabaret had been sold on a standard-definition DVD from Warner Bros., but the film was unavailable in high-definition or for digital projections in cinemas.[55] The original camera negative is lost, and a surviving interpositive had a vertical scratch that ran through 1,000 feet, or 10 minutes, of one of its reels, as confirmed by Ned Price, vice president of mastering and restoration for Warner Bros.[55] The damage ostensibly was inflicted by a grain of dirt that had rolled through the length of the reel, beginning with a scene in which Michael York's character confronts a pro-Nazi boarding house resident, and had cut into the emulsion.[55] The marred frames were digitally restored, but "the difficult part was matching the grain structure so the fix was invisible." After automated digital repair attempts failed, the 1,000 feet of damaged film was hand painted using a computer stylus.[55]

Warner Archive Collection reissued the Blu-ray on November 20, 2018 without the DigiBook.[57]