Cabaret [40th Anniversary]

Overview

Adapted from the Broadway show, this hard-hitting musical drama is set in decadent 1930s Berlin during Hitler's rise to power. The film chronicles Cambridge student Brian Roberts' friendship with the high-spirited Sally Bowles, a singer at the sleazy Kit Kat nightclub, where the anti-Semitic emcee sets a tone of debauchery.

Product Details

Release Date:	02/05/2013
UPC:	0883929265992
Original Release:	1972
Rating:	PG
Source:	Warner Home Video
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	2:04:00
Sales rank:	3,451

Special Features

Commentary by Stephen Tropiano; Featurette Cabaret: The Musical That Changed Musicals; Vintage Featurettes Cabaret: A Legend in the Making and The Recreation of an Era

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Liza Minnelli	Sally Bowles
Joel Grey	Master of Ceremonies
Michael York	Brian Roberts
Marisa Berenson	Natalia Landauer
Helmut Griem	Maximilian von Heune
Fritz Wepper	Fritz Wendel
Elisabeth Neumann-Viertel	Fraulein Schneider
Sigrid von Richtofen	Fraulein Maur
Helen Vita	Fraulein Kost
Gerd Vespermann	Bobby
Ralf Wolter	Herr Ludwig
Georg Hartmann	Willi,Willi
Ricky Renee	Elke
Estrongo Nachama	Cantor
Kathryn Doby	Kit-Kat Dancer
Inge Jaeger	Kit-Kat Dancer
Angelika Koch	Kit-Kat Dancer
Helen Velkovorska	Kit-Kat Dancer
Gitta Schmidt	Kit-Kat Dancer
Louise Quick	Kit-Kat Dancer
John Kander	Composer
Fred Ebb	Composer
Ralph Burns	Composer

Technical Credits

Jay Presson Allen

Hugh Wheeler

Bob Fosse	Director
Jay Presson Allen	Screenwriter
Cy Feuer	Producer
David Hildyard	Sound/Sound Designer
Robert Knudson	Sound/Sound Designer
Hugh Wheeler	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Less a traditional musical than a drama featuring musical numbers, Cabaret is a beautiful, disturbing evocation of life in Germany during Hitler's rise to power. Using the Kit Kat Club's expertly choreographed routines to reflect the changes in German society, director Bob Fosse effectively shows us a glittering, illusory world, whose insular decadence starkly contrasts with the encroaching horror of reality. Sally Bowles exists at the heart of the turmoil, a conductor for the unrestrained, buoyant energy that both electrifies the club and stands to be threatened by what is going on in the world outside of it. Brash, shamelessly sexual, and bearing a self-assurance of enviable proportions, she is a perfectly flawed heroine, one of the most fully realized women incarnated on the page, stage, and screen. Liza Minnelli portrays her with the energy and blissful abandon that the character requires, turning in one of the best performances of her career. The sight of her performing in the Kit Kat Club, clad in a bowler, boots, and little else and making novel use of a chair, remains one of the screen's most iconic images. The focus on the relationships of the film's main characters, most notably that of Sally and Brian (played with gentle, almost poetic befuddlement by Michael York), perfectly juxtaposes the turbulence of private lives and public events. Sally's promiscuity, Brian's bisexuality, Maximilian's casual use of both characters, and the eventual acceptance of platonic friendship mirror the fortunes of a time and mentality whose mantra of pleasure would soon be forced to give way to one of pain. The best and most terrifying evocation of past debauchery and present "progression" towards a new, fascist ideal, is of course the Emcee. As played by an unforgettable Joel Grey, he occupies an existence somewhere between human and phantom, a cunning apparition who serves as a reminder of carnal delight and ideological oppression. Like the Emcee, Cabaret shows us both delight and oppression, providing a nuanced portrait of an era where the former was rapidly being eclipsed by the latter.