Cabaret By Jeff Shannon
Winner of eight Academy Awards,
including Best Director (Bob Fosse), Best Actress (Liza Minnelli), and
Best Supporting Actor (Joel Grey), Cabaret would also have taken
Best Picture if it hadn't been competing against The
Godfather as the most acclaimed film of 1972. (Francis Ford
Coppola would have to wait two years before winning Best Director, for The
Godfather, Part II.) Brilliantly adapted from the acclaimed stage
production, which was in turn inspired by Christopher Isherwood's Berlin
Stories and the play and movie I Am a Camera, this remarkable
musical turns the pre-war Berlin of 1931 into a sexually charged haven of
decadence. Minnelli commands the screen as nightclub entertainer Sally
Bowles, who radiantly goes on with the show as the Nazis rise to power,
holding her many male admirers (including Michael York and Helmut Griem)
at a distance that keeps her from having to bother with genuinely deep
emotions. Joel Grey is the master of ceremonies at the Kit Kat Klub who
will guarantee a great show night after night as a way of staving off the
inevitable effects of war and dictatorship. They're all living in a
morally ambiguous vacuum of desperate anxiety, determined to keep up
appearances as the real world--the world outside the comfortable sanctuary
of the cabaret--prepares for the nightmarish chaos of war.
Director-choreographer Fosse achieves a finely tuned combination of
devastating drama and ebullient entertainment, and the result is one of
the most substantial screen musicals ever made. The dual-layered Special
Edition widescreen DVD includes an exclusive 25th-anniversary documentary,
Cabaret: A Legend in the Making, a 1972 promotional featurette, a
photo gallery, production notes, the theatrical trailer, and more.
Academy Awards
Cabaret received Academy Awards
for Actress (Liza Minnelli), Supporting Actor (Joel Grey), Directing (Bob
Fosse), Art Direction/Set Decoration (Rolf Zehetbauer - Art Direction,
Jurgen Kiebach - Art Direction, Herbert Strabel - Set Decoration),
Cinematography (Geoffrey Unsworth), Film Editing (David Bretherton), Music
Scoring Awards (Best Scoring: Adaptation and Original Song Score; Ralph
Burns), and Sound (Robert Knudson, David Hildyard). Cabaret also
received Academy Awards nominations for
Best Picture (Cy Feuer - Producer) and Writing (Best Screenplay based on
material from another medium; Jay Presson Allen). |