Cabaret

Cabaret
by Bob Fosse

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DVD details

Actor: Fritz Wepper, Helmut Griem, Joel Grey, Liza Minnelli, Michael York
Director: Bob Fosse
Brand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: Geoffrey Unsworth
Producer: Cy Feuer
Producer: Harold Nebenzal
Writer: Christopher Isherwood
Writer: Jay Presson Allen
Writer: Joe Masteroff
Writer: John Van Druten
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; German (Original Language); Hebrew (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 124 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-08-19
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video

DVD Reviews of Cabaret

DVD Review: "Liza Becomes An Icon In This Film"
Summary: 5 Stars

Before the release of "Cabaret", Liza Minnilli was known as a curisoity by the general public: people knew her as Judy Garland's daughter who had an impeccable voice with stage presence, but she wasn't known as her own person-she was attached to the image of a daughter of a showbiz legend. When "Cabaret" came out everything in Liza's life changed: she became her own person, well regarded by film and music critics as a wonderful entertainer who could hold her own on stage and in film. She became the icon she is now known as.
"Cabaret" was based on the original Broadway production of the same name. It's set in 1931 Berlin, where Liza plays Sally Bowles, an entertainer at a bar called the Kit Kat Club. John Kander and Fred Ebb, who would write the score to another amazing Broadway musical, "Chicago", penned all the songs in this picture and would become two of Liza's favorite music writers. "Cabaret" is probably one of the greatest musicals in film history, and it's widely regarded as the movie that brought back the musical to films. The picture won a total of 8 Oscars, including wins for Liza for Best Actress, one for Joel Grey, who won for Best Supporting Actor, and a win for Bob Fosse for Best Director.
This particular DVD is loaded with bonus features including the original theatrical trailer, interviews with the cast, including Miss Minnilli, and extensive production notes.
Liza's career went into overdrive with this film. She made the covers of both "Time" and "Newsweek", and would continue touring and appearing in film and televison projects. Two other amazing works of Liza's are her NBC special called "Liza With A Z", that is available in an exquisite DVD set, and her 1964 British special with her mom called "Judy and Liza-Live at the Palladium".

DVD Review: Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome...
Summary: 5 Stars

Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)

I watched Bob Fosse's Cabaret for the first time in almost thirty years last night, and what jumped out at me was the state of education in America today. Which doesn't make sense when you're talking about a film set in 1931 Germany, I grant you. But the first time I saw it, back in late 1980, I was in seventh grade, and it was shown in music class. Yes, a class of seventh-graders sat, quietly, spellbound, for two hours, watching Cabaret. Imagine if the movie were shown in music class in 2009. How many parents would be up in arms, trying to get the teacher fired, or jailed, for showing students a movie that contained profanity, homosexuality, risqu? costumes, Nazis, and a protagonist who sleeps with more than one man and isn't married to any of them? Forget being jailed. They'd call for the teacher's head on a pole outside the school. Back in 1980, did anyone raise a stink? Of course not. And we seventh-graders didn't get most of that anyway. We were too busy paying attention to the music, the spectacle, the glamour of the thing. (I didn't even remember how seedy the Kit Kat Club was; when you're twelve, and you've got Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli marketing it to you as the pinnacle of culture in Berlin, you tend to believe them.) And are we really any better for it? Again, of course not. I'm of a mind to say we're worse. I hope I'm not alone. As for Cabaret itself, well, it's as understated as Fosse's later All That Jazz is ebullient.

Germany in 1931 was the height of between-the-wars decadence; the Nazis had not yet come to power, and expatriates from all over the globe flocked to Berlin, where the cost of living was cheap, and so was life. Sally Bowles (Minnelli) is one of those expatriates, an American singer working at the rundown Kit Kat Club, along with a host of others headed up by the mysterious Master of Ceremonies (Grey). By day she rents a room from Fraulein Schneider (Elisabeth Neumann-Viertel from Town Without Pity). One day, Brian Roberts (Michael York) wanders into the place looking for a cheap room; he ends up across from Sally, and the two of them become fast friends. All goes well, with Sally singing at the cabaret and Brian teaching English for a living (the film's most enchanting subplot, as well as the main device allowing the gradual Nazi takeover of Germany to creep in on the sidelines, is a budding romance between two of Brian's pupils), until Maximilan von Heune (The Plot to Kill Hitler's Helmut Griem) appears on the scene, stirring the very small pot with his wealth, extravagance, and flirtatious nature.

Love triangles can be a touchy subject on film, but John van Druten's play (based loosely on Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories) gets everything right, and Fosse's adaptation just expands on the source material; the three personalities involved here are perfectly tuned to play against one another in the most entertaining possible ways, and they never fail to do so. The three main characters, once that stage is set, snipe, pick, and fight at one another (against the backdrop of Brian's two students, who have entirely different relationship problems), and we can just sit back and chuckle, albeit a bit uncomfortably. Life is a cabaret, old chum, indeed.

But even now, thirty years after first seeing it, the scenes that really resonate with me--and I'm a person who, as a rule, is not at all fond of musicals--are the stage performances. A lot of them, for obvious reasons, make a lot more sense now that I'm in my forties and have a better sense of history. (The punch line of Joel Grey's number with the ape? Priceless. And then Fosse cuts to the Nazi officer sitting in the shadows...) Joel Grey is absolute magic in this role (well, duh, he did win Best Supporting Actor), as he is almost every time he graces a movie screen. He and Minnelli play off each other in an entirely different, but just as interesting, way as she plays off York (who comes across here as less assured, and more appealing, than in any other movie in which I've seen him). The dark, smoky atmosphere, the routines that tread the line of burlesque, the pointed political criticism, it's all Broadway sorcery that works in a way only Bob Fosse has ever, in my experience, been able to translate correctly to a movie screen. I'm not talking about musicals in general here, but the almost surreal qualities that Fosse's movies tend to (viz, the surgery routine in All That Jazz or the aforementioned ape routine here). Amazing stuff, and well worth your time. A classic for a reason. **** ?

DVD Review: Brilliant interpretation of pre-Nazi Berlin
Summary: 4 Stars

I have heard of this film for ages but never got around to watching it. I'm glad I did though, if for no other reason that the music, which I enjoyed immensely. While capturing the decadence of Weimar Germany the director also, perhaps unwittingly, captured the backlash against such decadence of ordinary Germans when a Hitler Youth member begins to sing a patriotic song, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," which brings everyone to their feet singing. People were tired of negativity and moral decay and wanted their country to be strong again. The Nazis took advantage of these feelings to rouse the population behind them, a population which never imagined what the ultimate price would be.

But aside from the Big Picture, this was a great performance by everyone involved.

DVD Review: best
Summary: 5 Stars

this is hands down my favourite movie OF ALL TIME. i must add, i was not alive when it first came out, so it is not of my generation...but a good movie will be a good movie forever. and this certainly has stood the test of time.

it is absolutely the most well designed, well written, and well played piece of cinema i have ever ever ever seen. though originally adapted from the stage musical, it fleshes out a central story which makes its plot much less disjointed...a good number of songs are cut from the stage version, and a couple new ones added. the new ones surprisingly fit in quite well, as i did not know this until i later saw the stage version and wondered to myself why songs were missing. i've seen the stage version several times- i actually prefer the movie's plot better.

it was nominated for 10 academy awards in 1973 and won 8...the two it lost was to another ageless classic, the godfather. and come on, you can't fault them for losing to that movie...

it doesn't matter if you don't particularly like musicals. if you like meaningful movies that are not obvious but instead heartbreakingly subtle and different, you should see it.

DVD Review: Fantastic
Summary: 5 Stars

This is a great movie. And this is a good solid viewing version of it. AB

Description of Cabaret

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome to Cabaret. The winner of eight Academy Awards, it boasts a score by the legendary songwriting partnership behind another film that would energize the movie musical genre with equal razzle-dazzle 30 years later: Chicago's John Kander and Fred Ebb. Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin, starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) and an impish emcee (Joel Grey) sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force. Cabaret caught lightning (and won Oscars) for Minnelli, Grey and director Bob Fosse, who shaped a triumph of style and substance. Come to this Cabaret, old chum. You'll never want to leave.

DVD Features:
Documentary:25th-Anniversary Documentary "Cabaret: A Legend in the Making"
Featurette:"The Recreation of An Era"
Interactive Menus
Interviews
Production Notes:"Kit Kat Klub Memory Gallery": The film's stars and creators reminisce about making movie musical history.
Scene Access
Theatrical Trailer

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. --Jeff Shannon

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Cabaret: Original Soundtrack Recording (1972 Film) Image

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