1972: Cabaret

Cabaret (Fosse, 1972) 7/10

In German historiography, the pre-Nazi era interwar period between 1919-1933 is commonly referred to as the Weimar Period. Named after the city in the eastern German Land (province) of Thüringen were the German Republic constitution was drafted, the actual city of Weimar is arguably Germany's cultural epicentre. Home to the German National Theatre and located near Dessau (home of the famous Bauhaus movement), Weimar's residents have included writers such as Goethe and Schiller, thinkers such as Herder and Nietzsche, painters such as Kandinsky and Klee and musicians such as Bach and Wagner. Perhaps because of the city's link to German culture, the term Weimar Period has been synonmous with art, design and performance.

Yet, the type of art commonly associated with the Weimar Period, the cabaret, was not a product of Weimar the city, but rather Berlin. After the fall of Imperial Germany, the cabaret was briefly released from the shackles of censorship during the pre-Nazi era and became an important socio-cultural forum for political criticism and social discussion. Although cabaret is most often associated with its initial French variation featuring dancers such as Josephine Baker in venues such as the Folies-Bergère and Moulin Rouge, its more political German equivalent lost much of its edge and artistry with the rise of the Nazis: as the cabaret was suppressed resulting in the imprisonment, murder and exile of numerous cabaret performers throughout Germany.

It is during the twilight of this brief period of laxed censorship and economic turmoil that Bob Fosse sets his 1972 film Cabaret: a film focusing on a type of entertainment far removed from the classical formats traditionally associated with Weimar the city. Adapted from a 1966 Broadway musical by Kander and Ebb, Cabaret was originally offered to both Billy Wilder and Gene Kelly, who turned the project down. Instead Bob Fosse, a noted choreographer stepped behind the camera for the first time and created a film imbued with his consciously filmic interests in the erotic, ignorance and materialism.

The film stars Michael York as Brian Roberts, a graduate student from Cambridge who moves to Berlin to aid the completion of his doctorate. Penniless and homeless, Brian rents a room in an apartment building with plans to teach English to the Berlin intelligentsia and economic elite. There he meets Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) an American emigree, who becomes his friend and lover. Together the film chronicles their bohemian lifestyle amidst the decadent world of Berlin's ancien riche and the rising Nazi storm.

In several interviews, Martin Scorsese has attested that he tried to create his ill-constructed New York, New York as a "film noir musical." Despite his honourable intentions, Scorsese's vision fails to adapt to this vision. Conversely, if one were to use the rationale that noir is a mood and not a movement, then Fosse's Cabaret is truly a film noir musical. Visually the film uses limited amounts of light in its cabaret sequences, which provide these sequences with a sinister quality.

In terms of narrative, Cabaret utilizes experimental editing techniques, which enhance the off-kiler resonance of the period. Sally Bowles is an archetypal femme fatale who utilizes her sex to seduce men for power, pleasure and material goods. Furthermore, Bowles' reckless behaviour threatens to destroy her subdued lover Brian, who can be seen as noir's "fall guy:" caught up in the web of vice, sin and greed the immoral surrounding world represents and the femme fatale embodies. Additionally, the film's denouement fails to neatly resolve the world's moral order, but rather impresses the notion of distortion and paranoia in warped mirrors and the ambigious endings for several characters.

In Bob Fosse's brief directorial filmography there is an explicit interest in the erotic and sexuality. Cabaret his first film is no exception. Like All That Jazz there are several references to stripping, while the acts and performances at the cabaret often feature lewd jokes, racy puns and revealing clothing.

Interestingly, while European made films of the period such as Bertolucci's 1900, Visconti's The Damned and Cavani's The Night Porter associate Nazi's with sexual perversity, it is the bohemians, artists and capitalists who are equated with moral depravity, which is as much related to sexuality as it is materialism. Through the locale of the cabaret, sex becomes a commodity. Frequently, Bowles is seen off-stage flirting with overweight and aging businessmen in small cubicles as she tries to earn a few more Deutschmarks in order to pay her rent.

Another trademark of Fosse's cinema is his focus on duplicity and personas. In Cabaret each performance introduced by the film's anoynmous German emcee (Joel Grey) involves the creation and delivery of another identity through costume, song and style. In her make-up and costumes, Sally creates an exaggerated idealized version of herself built on half-truths about an ambassador for a father. These personas allow her, like All That Jazz's Joe Gideon, to be adored by admirers but not loved. Persona and duplicity combine when the film's homosexual transvestite performers attempt to woo clients who are unaware of their gender or orientation. The secret desires and obsessions held by Brian, Sally and her wealthy client Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem) are another facet of this duplicity, which results in loss and betrayal for all parties.

Like All That Jazz's Joe Gideon, one can perhaps argue that Sally Bowles represents Bob Fosse. Like Gideon, Bowles embarks on impossible ventures, which result in self-destruction; lavishes herself in empty materialism and meaningless sex to replace true affection and is ignorant of the world around her. For Sally Bowles " Life is a cabaret" and nothing more. It is a one-act show featuring an exclusive one-night only performance. As a result, Sally attempts to do everything, yet is too naive to understand the consequences of her actions. Behind her back she is often mocked as being childish and childlike by her supposed friends such as Brian and Maximilian. She trusts people to shower her in gifts, but is unreliable to others and cannot commit to true relationships. Nor can she realize that her overly ambitious attempts to be a legitimate film actress will never be fulfilled. Thus in her bid to protect and shelter herself from the blows of the world, Sally insulates herself in a somatic world, which caters to her carnal needs, but lacks the direction and organic spiritualism necessary for a truly fulfilling life.

In Cabaret, Bob Fosse demonstrates his aptitude for provactive material and characters. His hubris and auterist conceptions of the medium are present in his aesthetic approach to the narrative, which displays his thematic concerns and interests. Liza Minnelli's career-shaping performance as Sally Bowles is filled with pep in constrast to Michael York's cold and flat demeanour. Joel Grey is particularly affecting as the cabaret's emcee: further illustrating Fosse's penchant for circus-like situations and the grotesque. Additionally Fosse also shows great strength and agility in re-working Ebb and Kander's music around the cabaret itself: integrating the songs as an instrument designed to propel the film's subtext and ideas, rather than superfluous pauses in action.

Unlike All That Jazz, the film's faults can be attributed to its editing as David Bretherton's approach to editing, results in a rather slow middle to the film. Furthermore, the film's subplot involving two German lovers Fritz Wendel (Fritz Wepper) and Natalia Landauer (Marisa Berenson) is jettisoned without care in the last quarter hour; discarding the business friendship created between Fritz and Brian, while leaving the fate of Natalia and Fritz in ominous circumstances.

In Bob Fosse's 1972 noirish musical Cabaret the illusory world of art and material decadence unfolds under the auspices of the looming Nazi era. Within the darkened corners of the cabaret, there lies Fosse's critique of the erotic, artificiality, ignorance and intent; themes and visual ideas which Fosse intricately is able to successfully transfer to celluloid in order to show the ease by which intellectual and artistic fascism develops and suppresses individuals with its inherent violent authority. Thus Cabaret serves as not only an illustration of failed aspirations and dual identities, but also a reminder of the swiftness of regressive socio-political change in a society too interested in its own carnal individual pursuits.

* Cabaret is available through Warner Brothers Home Video

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque