Cabaret

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This is a great story based in Berlin at the rise of the Nazis to power. it has some wonderful songs, some of which will be familiar to many. it also has some wonderful acting, especially by Joel Grey as the MC of the KitKatKlub. While the Supporting Actor category that year was deep with wonderful performances by the trio from The Godfather, i do think Mr. Grey deserved it for his role as the MC. just wonderful.

Rating:
Summary: My Favourite "Musical"!
Review: This review is for the DVD release of Cabaret.
The DVD picture quality is slightly grainy, but overall quite good for a 1972 film with brillant reds and deep blues. The playful colors of the night club are full of warmth and life. The sound quality is full, rich and clear on a good home theater system. The DVD comes with a number of interviews and a making-of documentary segment. It is in widescreen format 2.85:1.33 with subtitles in English as well as several languages.

The film is one of the all-time sleepers that never got its due reward in my opinion! There is NO reason why each of you reading this do not own and cherish this briliant film. This is the best musical of our time, and one of the best films on the Weimer years of Germany. Everyone should see this amazing movie, I sincerely HIGHLY recommend this film! Rent, or better yet, purchase this DVD today!

Rating:
Summary: Tomorrow belongs to me.
Review: Not much can be said that you do not already know. This movie has songs that you remember and probably sing in the shower. What I found interesting is that I always heard that Germans liked to sing of things as the deer in the field and so forth. Here there was a perfect example when they broke into song with "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" You are swept up in it and forget that this is just a movie.
I also like books that become movies and movies that are novelized. So naturally I read Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Stories" ISBN: 0811200701. They were o.k. However, it was not Cabaret.

Rating:
Summary: "negatives...........?"
Review: Tailor and Oscar made for Liza Minnelli [better in "Sterile Cuckoo"]this work although dated aptly reflects some of that period.

BUT what happened to the sub-plot? The Landlady and her romance????? This one's kinda 'gorgeous people' circa Nazi Berlin, and was the rage when it opened, but it has dated even more than the previous excursion into this territory - the earlier "I Am A Camera" with Julie Harris. Joel Grey seems one beat away from a musical Freddy Kruger in this one although a deserved Oscar, at that time, went to him. An unusual part - possible homage to Visconti here, and unique, no dialogue for the MC - just song after successful song, Brechtian!

Milquetoast Michael York [very 1970] stars as the sexually confused Brian [Isherwood - a little more glam that Laurence Harvey is that's possible, but Harvey did play "Christopher" in the earlier version]. AND it's sexually very open for 1970 too [bisexuality, confusion, abortion, confusion, etc. and the "f" word too!]

Favourites? The Chorus Girls of course, and the band, now THAT's close to the original earlier somewhat lumpy, but still glam 'Blue Angel' gals, but didn't DIETRICH do this so much better???

Would be nice to see a re-imagining of this work - as written by Mr. Isherwood, page by page.

Rating:
Summary: In here life is beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: Great movie!!!!!!!!!!!!! And great music!!!!!!!!!!!!
The perfomance of Minnelli, York and Grey are simply amazing!!!

Rating:
Summary: was and still is the best of Liza
Review: i was so excited to see this on DVD, and with all the interviews of the stars who are still alive. I saw this movie just when I graduated college, and it's still the best of Liza, and perhaps one of the best musicals ever on film. Tho I know the movie version was much different than the original Broadway play, I love it. and I'll watch it annually or more often to enjoy the production numbers, and remember the message, so somber against the music.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely the best.
Review: My video claims to work with NTSC - and I now know it does. This video is not available in the UK with PAL, but as most newer vids in the UK claim to run NTSC, it is now within the grasp of all those of us who have hungered for a copy of the movie, but were unable to see it.

There's a half-hour documentary at the beginning, my only grouse is that I would have rather it was at the end, so the film was where I want it.

The film itself is just beautiful. The music is beautiful. And, yes - even the orchestra is beautiful!!

What can I say? The film should be compulsory viewing for all children? It charts the progress of Hitler's Germany in a way that is totally understandable. The horror that exists is visible, but it doesn't horrify, it works your emotions over.

If you've never seen it - you've not lived yet!

Rating:
Summary: Towering Achievement, But Shoots too High
Review: On traditional grounds, "Cabaret" is one of the best musicals ever filmed. Its performances, especially Joel Grey's and Liza Minnelli's, are stunning, its dance sequences exuberant, fluid magic. Audiences raised on the usual Hollywood formulas will be surprised by its radical format, cultural savvy, and the naturalness of its dramatic scenes. Director Bob Fosse can strike more emotional chords in one sequence than most musicals do in two and a half hours; he deftly mingles humor with tragedy, irony with joy, exuberance with fear. The songs, while bearing little resemblance to real 1930's cabaret music (and often inferior to those of the stage production), are memorable, tuneful and witty. With these ingredients it seems almost the perfect musical.

The trouble is that it is ambitious enough to explore the enigma of Nazi Germany. When dealing with the worst crime of the 20th Century, art can't afford to be frivolous or half-baked. "Cabaret" triumphs as comedy, drama, and musical theater, but fails miserably as political commentary--on the era that most gravely demands accuracy and care.

Sally Bowles' (and Berlin's) naive fascination with "divine decadence" is made to look grotesque and dangerous through Fosse's lens. Sally is promiscuous and sexually mercenary, and aborts an extramarital pregnancy. Cliff and many others are bisexual, and the titular nightclub is rife with cross-dressing, sadomasochism, androgyny, and other "transgressions". The movie doesn't condemn these practices per se' (nor should it), but it implies that this "moral laxness" helped pave the way for the ultimate obscenity of Nazi Germany. At best, this is the cliche of partygoers too busy pleasuring themselves to notice the plague in their city; at worst, it's the epitome of American Puritanism. Either one distorts a crucial issue.

The true "decadence" of 1930's Germany wasn't the hedonism or sexual experimentation of the young, but hypocrisy from above. The same bourgeois elders who cavorted at these nightspots posed as pillars of the community by day. They were moral turncoats, living a lie that acclimatized them for more deadly compromises of their integrity while making them prone to political manipulation. If any kind of "decadence" hastened the downfall of Germany's humanity it was this charade, this rot from within. Not female mud-wrestling or Cliff and Sally's love triangle with the Baron. The musical's own source material (Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Stories") bears this out.

It's not routine to ask political astuteness of a musical, but "Cabaret's" subject matter begs the question. Its failure is less a matter of bad plotting than a tribute to the movie's originality and courage, but it still makes you yearn for what might have been.

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece, but the DVD extras are nothing special
Review: This film is a masterpiece of modern musical theatre film. Fosse's work from camera angles to lighting and choreography is simply perfection. Minnelli, Grey and York are all excellent in their roles, and Kander and Ebb's songs add so much to each plot development, unlike other movie musicals, where the songs just seemed tacked on as an excuse for some singing and dancing.

The DVD contains a mini-documentary on the making of the film as well as the original theatrical trailer and interviews with all the stars, producers and staff involved (except Fosse). The remastering of the film is beautiful..the colors look better than ever and the sound is excellent.

Unfortunately, Fosse died in 1987 and somehow, without his commentary the DVD extras seem to be missing something. More time should have been spent in the extras on his life and his thoughts on the film. I've read several Fosse biographies and there's plenty of material out there that could been placed on the DVD.

This was my first ever DVD, and while I am happy with the quality of the picture itself, the extras seem a bit tacked on and not incredibly illuminating. Just scratching the surface of DVD potential really.

Rating:
Summary: Put this on your "movies to see before I die" list
Review: The ultimate performance by Liza Minnelli is only one reason why this movie is one of the best ever. A great drama/romance/musical/comedy blending all elements seamlessly. The fabulous musical numbers work as a side commentary to the story. You simply cannot take your eyes off Minnelli, or Joel Grey. The supporting cast of Michael York, Marisa Berenson, Fritz Wepper, Helmut Griem are also perfect. Have a laugh, have a cry, but you will enjoy this classic, telling the story of an Americal chorus girl looking for a breakthrough in Berlin just prior to the nazi uprising. Seeking love yet clinging to her independence, Sally tries to balance her relationships while another couple fight to be together despite the dangers of their religiously at-odds union. Simply brilliant.