Three-Part Mini-Series
Occasionally we'll take a movie and baton pass it around the team and really dive in. If you missed past installments we've gone long and deep on Rebecca (1940), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Silence of the Lambs (1991), Thelma & Louise (1991), and A League of Their Own (1992). Now... Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972) which is showing this weekend at the Quad Cinema in NYC - Editor
Team Experience is proud to present a three-part retrospective deep dive into Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972), winner of 8 Oscars, and one of the most singular films ever made. Though it takes place on a stage it's entirely cinematic in a way many film musicals --even the ones that don't involve actual stages -- ever even think to be.
Part 1 by Nathaniel R
00:01 Cabaret begins in total silence with white text credits on a black screen. Countless movies begin this way, but not musicals. There is no bright and colorful title card, no overture to prep you for its famous song score. Cabaret takes place at the dead end of the Weimar era in Germany, and emerged onscreen at the dead end of the musical genre's dominance of movie culture. This is not lost on the genius dancer/choreographer turned film director Bob Fosse, who throws us immediately into a dark and dingy underworld... as if we've already eaten pomegranate seeds and sealed our fate...
02:08 As the credits continue diegetic sound rises, people talking and laughing, the occassional clink of a glass or silverware, and we begin to see a distorted image, but of what exactly? A band warming up, a drumroll, a shift to color, and then The Emcee pops into frame, his warped reflection staring into camera, and offering us a tilted impish grin. And then Cabaret's famous opening song "Willkommen"
02:35 Notably the first big moment of real color is blood red, the Emcee backing away from the fun house mirrored wall and under the low red roof of the Kit Kat Club's tight stage.
02:41 Cabaret doesn't spend much, if any time, with exposition so it's left to the visuals and the songs to infer time, place, and meaning. I love the split second cutaways to club denizens reenacted Otto Dix paintings, a highly sophisticated way to place you in Weimar-era Germany. Several years ago there was an exhibit of Dix's work at a museum in town and it was really something to gawk at.
02:55 This is our first shot of Brian (Michael York) as he arrives in Berlin while the Emcee is singing "welcome." In most good musicals the songs advance the narrative and work as storytelling. In Cabaret, though, a different approach -- the songs speaking back to the narrative more than telling it, as if in direct conversation.
"Leave your troubles outside.
So life is disappointing. Forget it!
In here...life is beautiful. The girls are beautiful. Even the orchestra is beautiful"
This 'welcome' feels like a trap, doesn't it?
04:21 "And now presenting the Cabaret girls..." I feel like these ladies never get their due -- especially because they're only billed as "Kit-Kat Dancers" in the film, even though they're named individually onscreen and they have to constantly sing and dance and contort their body into uncomfortable positions. Only one of these women ever made another film! I tried valiantly to figure out who played which role for this retrospective but was unable to find much info.
"Heidi"
"Christina"
"Mousey"
I think this is Kathryn Doby, a frequent Fosse assistant, who you can also see dancing in All That Jazz (1979), but I'm not 100% sure. Unlike the other Kit-Kat dancers she actually acted in a few other films, including the original version of The Handmaid's Tale (1990) where she plays "Aunt Elizabeth" so I really wish I could figure out if this is in fact, her.
"Helga"
Helga (Louise Quick) is my favorite and not just because of the all-around-the-eyes blue eyeshadow. I can't get over how completely carnal her face is during these scenes, she's just exuding sex. This makes Joel Grey's "ask Helga" line even funnier when he claims they're all virgins, to much audience laughter.
Quick is also the one who is in the gorilla suit later in the movie dancing with Joel Grey. A favorite of Fosse's she also danced with Liza in the TV special "Liza with a Z". Get this: whenever you're hearing Liza's footsteps in the sound mix, it's her footsteps because apparently Fosse kept her around for post-production, too. [Here's an interview with her if you're curious.]
"Betty"
"...und Inge"
Doby and Quick were the only English-speaking dancers among the Kit-Kat girls. I spend this bandwidth on the Kit-Kat Girls introduction for another reason, too. Which is to show how exquisitely and perversely Bob Fosse "welcomes" you into the movie. While the Emcee is singing "Velkommen," the editing keeps giving us slivers of Brian (Michael York) arriving in Berlin. The Kit Kat dancers moves become frenzied with kick lines and the like, the camera taking them in from multiple angles including directly underneath them! (I think we can be reasonably certain that Baz Luhrmann consumed this movie intravenously as a younger man.)
...and then, before you've even realized it, Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) has entered the film.
06:11 This is your first shot of Liza above; She's the one in the red gown, headless. She's just kind of sauntered onto the stage in the midst of the introductory chaos while another performer is about to bend over into a pretzel shape, ass-out to the crowd. Cabaret was, of course, a sensational star vehicle for Liza Minnelli, winning her the Oscar, but within the Kit-Kat Club, Sally is just another nobody trying to make a dime and maybe become somebody.
I don't think it's any accident that all three of the film's stars are introduced in shots that distort, obscure, or disfigure them, though this is literally the first time I've noticed it.
06:15 Even when the emcee introduces Sally to the audience, our view is obstructed by Heidi's ass! Sally is out of focus before she's even finished her bow, the camera already lustily darting to someone else. This non-star star entrance for Liza is, for me, a beautiful callback to her mother Judy Garland's funny just-a-chorus-girl intro in Easter Parade.
06:46 One of many dirty visual gags the emcee makes even cruder with his oversized reactions to draw attention to them. Joel Grey is genius in this movie, somehow never stagnating in the part despite playing it hundreds of times on Broadway before even filming this.
"Divine decadence"
07:28 Brian and Sally meet cute through a chained door. Liza's Sally wants to be an "international woman of mystery" but has failed. But at least she has great comic timing. I love that as soon as he's said his name is Brian, she abruptly decides he's safe to let him and immediately calls him "darling" and starts spilling the house secrets.
08:41 The tour of the boarding house. Liza's incredible physicality as an actress is put to expert use in this scene, it's there in the little hand gestures when she's describing her neighbors, the way she straightens up all proper when she passes other tenants only to slouch again when she's out of view and comfortable with Brian her old pal of two minutes. Sally has trouble with time. When she says "forever" she means "three months" and so on.
What else do you need in a bedroom besides a bed."
09:20 Brian isn't impressed with the size of his room so Sally offers her room for his tutoring lessons, which gives her an excuse to spend more time with him. And to keep talking and she LOVES to talk.
10:29 "So you're moving right in, okay?" There's something so endearing about Sally's instantaneous affections and requests that sound a wee bit too much like needy demands. The scene ends with a wonderful bit about a peppermint flavored hangover remedy.
Sally AND the film move so quickly that as soon as she shoots Brian a completely enamored look we're racing to the stage for our next musical number.
11:09 The editing, influential with its breakneck speed and too-soon cuts (MTV and then Moulin Rouge! will take this impulse to even greater lengths of dizziness), already has us back at the Kit-Kat Club where Liza is hurrying to the stage to sing "Mein Herr". Such a great sound mix / acting flourish that she is reciting all the jokes from backstage as the Emcee, unseen, recites them onstage. They've done this a hundred times. The production design is so inspired, note how cramped her "dressing room" is, despite not really having any walls, and that she has to wiggle in and out of it.
11:32 "That international sensation, fraulein Sally Bowles!". I once read a review that suggested that Liza Minnelli was TOO talented to play Sally Bowles, the thinking being that the role should be played by someone with meager talents to better exemplify Sally's non-stardom. Baloney! The obvious dichotomy between Liza Minnelli's enormous musical gifts and Sally's impotent dreams of stardom within the cramped chintziness of this particular cabaret at the end of everyone's world (SPOILER ALERT: The Nazis are coming) is absolute electricity for the film. Life is full of contradictions, and tiny chintzy performance spaces in real life do sometimes contain super talented people who may never catch that one big break.
12:00 I shot about 25 frames from "Mein Herr" and realized it was never going to work to pick out favorite moments and choreographed details because every single shot, hand movement, leg drop, prop business... everything is thrilling. Today's directors don't seem to understand how to shoot dance onscreen, regularly cutting off people's feet randomly, whereas when Fosse does it, it's just inspired. He throws everything at the musical sequences: closeups, different angles, full body shots, lighting tricks, but because he's so talented at both musicals and direction, the result is that the camera and the editing become part of the choreography, not a crude attempt to merely shoot it or, worse, interrupt it frequently with non-meaningful shots to make it "cinematic".
True Story: the very first time I tried to watch Cabaret I was a kid and it was playing on late night TV. My mother walked into the living room and looked at what I was watching and said 'I wish you wouldn't watch that. That's a disgusting movie!' I always think of that when "Mein Herr" starts -- that must have been when she walked in to see her little Mormon boy completely mesmerized by a screen goddess who was FEELING herself (at one point, quite literally) and singing with pride about being a big restless slut!
15:02 That final beat of the song. That collapse with back arched. "Sensation," indeed. I die. It floors me every time. If I ever would make a list of favorite musical sequences onscreen "Mein Herr" would be in the top ten. Ever. Liza's mom would surely top the list but I'm sure Liza would be okay with that!
You've got to try one of these. They're absolutely devastating. I'm sure they're filled with opium... they make me feel wildly sensual!
16:33 Sally can't stop talking but she's so hilarious we can listen to her on a loop. Sally hooks Brian and Fritz up for English lessons, before she whisks off to entertain men. Meanwhile the Emcee presents some mudwrestling between two ladies on stage. As Fritz begins to talk about the economy...
18:07 ...we get our first shot of a Nazi, in the crowd. A smart screenplay choice to connect the rise of the Nazis to an offhand comment about economic collapse. As if psychically agitated by the Nazi's presence, the editing becomes suddenly frenzied, the mud wrestling, the Emcee, the crowd, the audience laughter are all increasingly grotesque.
19:12 The madness escalates and the sick punchline is this self-administered swipe of mud above the Emcee's lip -- a Hitler gag that's only funny to the people in the room. To the audience watching a period piece, who all know what went down in the 1930s, it's harrowing.
19:28 A quiet moment amid the chaos, but still confusion. A great shot of Brian and Elke (Ricky Renée) standing at the urinal together. Brian does a slight double take before a friendly smile as he exits.
19:55 She is a strange and extraordinary person! Some musicals die inbetween the musical numbers but Cabaret is compelling even when it's just simple conversations. Partially because Sally is such a one-of-a-kind character, but also due to the masterful cinematography, acting, editing, direction, design work (how were the costumes not nominated -what?!). I love the beat in this casual stroll scene where Brian, at Sally's bidding, has begun to talk about himself, and Sally immediately interrupts to talk about a movie star she absolutely loves.
20:20 "Do I shock you darling'?" "No, not a bit." "I don't?!?" These strolls with Brian have amazing dialogue. On their next stroll we learn about Sally's father. Or rather her delusions about him, and it ends with one of the great non-sequitors in all of cinema. "Have you ever slept with a dwarf?"
21:20 A great meta moment as Liza, going big for one of Sally's big moods, makes a ton of faces and then says she no longer likes that movie star she was talking about two scenes earlier because "she makes too many faces." Hee!
22:03 The train scene is as delightful to watch as it is for Sally to experience. It's a moment of nearly erotic abandon but also childlike in its innocence. Such a lovely scene, especially once Sally starts egging Brian on to scream with her at the passing trains.
23:40 But happiness, even in-the-moment happiness can't last in 1930s Berlin. At the exact split second when Brian and Sally will be screaming in gleeful unison, a smash cut to vicious Nazi violence which is itself crosscut with more of the Emcee's antics on the stage.
26:37 Sally pretends to be cold to get hugs from Brian. "Tighter" Sally's awkward come-ons barrel forward into very nonreciprocal kissing.
27:25 Liza's body language is just hilarious in this sequence, another example of great instincts and control while playing an out of control woman who acts on every instinctual whim. When the kiss is rejected her body suddenly stiffens up, all business like -- for the business of seduction, that is! -- she retreats only to return with a record player, reset the mood, and pointedly close the door. And then it's right back to her trademark liquid body, dancing with her upper body, particularly the arms and hands and sliding onto Brian's bed again with the immortal line...
Doesn't my body drive you wild with desire?"
28:00 ...Which she instantly spoils for another punchline with her neediness. "WELL, DOESN'T IT?!"
29:38 A frank discussion -- well, frank for 1972 cinema -- about whether or not Brian is queer. "All right. If you insist. I dont sleep with girls. The word for my sex life now is nil." Sally doesn't like the answer but relaxes again.
Her "Why didn't you say so?" protest with the melancholy realization that they can just be best friends is perfectly played... if half-hearted. Sally doesn't give up easilly.
How do you do?
34:00 Foul-mouthed Sally and her gold-digging friend Fritz 'accidentally' end up sitting down for tea -- against Brian's wishes -- with his new English pupil, a very rich and proper Jewish woman named Natalie Landauer (enter Marisa Berenson). What could possibly go wrong!
CONTINUE TO PART 2 WITH DANCIN' DAN