Amazon.com Essentials:
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
