The Evolution of Cabaret

It’s not ‘dance-y’ in the traditional sense but still well choreographed (and directed) by Fosse.

does anyone have a bootleg of the 2014 version…. please….

The Emcee is as close to a Greek Chorus as a musical can have, along with an omnipresent embodiment of the grim reaper.

In addition, life is a Cabaret….the pendulum swings back and forth…

Ok whomever is talking about the movie version makes a great layered movie multi-faceted story seem insipid.

The original director cast someone based on the novel's character. She ISN'T much of a talent or person...she is NOT supposed to sing like Liza Minelli--that's why she's stuck in a seedy bar in Berlin. He cast for the character; it just so happens the character is untalented. But the critics and audiences of that era wanted to see a star and someone, frankly, they'd like to nail :/ Not someone they'd find on the corner of 44th and 8th back in the day.

Of course bob fosse cut out anyone over 40 in the show (other than his misogynistic self). what a narcisistic asshole.

Mein HHHHHERR, guys! See the H? lol!

"that only a film actor could do?" are you kidding me?? no, dude, a good actor (not a film actor or a stage actor) makes subtle, interesting choices ,and only when when a director will allow (or direct for) such an interpretation.

I wish you guys had spoken more about Jane Horrocks' performance in the 1993 production. She has by far my favorite Sally interpretation.

Donmar Warehouse Cabaret wins imo

Anyone who agrees Mein Herr and Don't Tell Mama server the same purpose need to see the 2021 Cabaret revival

The reason Fr Schneider has great songs, the role was originally written for the legendary Lotte Lenya.

Children, children, children. Read Christopher Isherwoods The Berlin Stories and John VanDrutens I am a Camera and the articles and essays about the making of the original Cabaret musical or Joel Grey's autobiographies. You really don't understand the times that the stories took place in. Fosse fuged it up a bit because he over thought it and was essentially a bad editor, but the history of the times is very important if you want to get the messages or meaning of Cabaret. And none of you commented on the two different Money songs: Sitting Pretty from the '66 OG show and Money Makes the World Go Round from Fosse's film. HISTORY LESSON ALERT! Germany was still under crippling debt because of WW one and massive bad investments trying to get out of that debt, there's an ongoing economic depression, most people are starving and jobs were scarce EXCEPT for the Jewish people who had earlier learned how to save and make money because they were persecuted wherever they went and not allowed to own land - so they rented property, opened banks and necessary/highly profitable businesses, bought and sold gold/currency, farmed on leased land and amassed wealth against calamity like the depression, so guess WHO gets the blame? Sitting Pretty is about that economic depression and MMTWGR is a condensed version of that. Anyway it also helps to have experienced being in the show. I played the Maitre 'D in a college production of Cabaret. Oh and the Kit Kat was always a dive - it was based off the drag bars that Isherwood frequented in Berlin in the early 1930s and look up Magnus Hirschfeld while you're at it. Ciao Snookums!

The film Cabaret is definitely a musical. Just because they are not singing to each other instead of talking like an operetta or a 50s musical does not make it a straight drama. The NAZI takeover ended the Weimar Republic, the era of this story. With their takeover it ended the famous cabaret/nightlife scene which was considered by the hypocrite NAZIs as decadent & unwholesome.

I don't understand. I saw the movie Cabaret in the theater when it first came out. I was about 13 or 14 years old and I was fully aware of what the movie was about. Even I knew then anyone that stayed in Germany after the movie ended was doomed.
I think the movie's popularity was due to the fact all the songs were sung in the Cabaret, except one. You must understand at the time nobody was making musicals anymore. We were done with the whole movie musical format. This was a new and different take on the whole genre. To give it some context the movie that beat out Cabaret for best picture at the Oscars was The Godfather. People were not going to see The Godfather one week then go to see a Singing In The Rain type format musical the next.
I think that having Cabaret at the end of the movie is very important. People are pretending that you can ignore what is happening outside still, as the Nazis are at your front door. For me the more subtle approach is more effective. It's the thing that casts the shadow on everything you just watched and puts it into perspective.
Also think about the year the movie came out. 1972. In 1972 there were a lot more concentration camp survivors alive than there are today. And they want to go out to the movies too. But they don't need to be hit over the head with an anvil on this topic. They know all about it, they lived it. They could write the script. If you are too explicit with this subject you could be forcing a part of the audience to relive it.
You might be interested to know that initially, Cabaret the movie got an X rating in Britain. It was later removed, but initially it got an X rating.
As for Liza's character she was talking to her dad about 1920's glamour. And asked him should I look like Marlene Dietrich? Fortunately he said no study everything you can about Louise Brooks. So she did. Liza's Sallly Bowles is fashioned after a scene in the movie Pandora's Box (1929), and Louise's character Lulu.
You'll be happy to know Christopher Isherwood wrote a novel called Sally Bowles. In it he lets the reader know that the Sally character did flee to England and escape the Nazis. As well as some of the other characters. It didn't say if the Master of Ceremonies was one of them.
I look at the Kit Kat Club as the Saturday Night Live of it's day. And the Master of Ceremonies as it's Chevy Chase.

F-bombs are not appreciated

You should add a review on the latest version of Cabaret with Mason Alexander as Emcee in it.

La tesis de denunciar que la pasividad permitió el ascenso del nazismo es una excusa amable y pseudo hipócrita para calmar mentes. El ascenso del nazismo se debió precisamente a la acción de alemanes que desearon y votaron al nazismo debido a la crisis y humillación internacional. Y a la actitud totalmente activa de quien apoyaba a Hitler por diversos motivos. New York Times incluído haciéndole reportajes como "el hombre del año".

There be no more terrifying moment in any movie than the song Tomorrow Belongs to Me ending with Joel Gray flashing the mirror.

My gay anarchist ivy League mom hates hating things.

I’ve bumped into your shows a couple of times now and I will move on next time you appear. I’m fascinated by how “straight” your expectations of plot or narrative are at no point do you expect the audience to do any work. You need the tabloid version of a show with big dynamics and a clear payoff.

The ‘98 production with Natasha Richardson is my favorite, hands-down. It is the most effective, streamlined, and powerful, especially nowadays. Richardson is also my favorite Sally, so there’s that.

Good explanation of the Weimar republic, and events leading to the horror of WW2.

"Mein Err"?

The original play and film musical is actually based on stories from two books by Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin, and Mr Norris Changes Trians. Both semi autobiographical novels by Isherwood.
The Sally Bowles character is based on a real English singer who lived in Germany in the early 30s called Jean Ross

Content warning? Oh FFS. Grow up.

Pedant here: The H isn’t silent in Mein Herr. It’s German, not French

Glad you're covering Cabaret right now. It's always been an important show, never more than these days. This is the first episode of your podcast I've caught, and I enjoyed it! I was surprised though at the mispronunciations... just a little more homework on names of people, songs, and historical context, and you guys will have it tightened up.

Liza Minelli is too talented to be Sally. Sally is supposed to be a mediocre singer and performer. I dislike the movie out of all the versions I have seen, because while there are good moments, it is too vague.

This was a really thoughtful critical review of Cabaret. Very well done! I subscribed to the podcast and can’t wait to binge it.

The movie got the sense of security and fun at the seedy cabaret spot on, but it really fumbled the plot IMO. And as much as I love Liza Minnelli in the movie, I do tend to prefer someone who’s not such a competent singer to play sally, or at least portray her as such

I think the whole point of this saga of a self-obsessed dysfunctional group of people who were too involved to notice what was going on around them until it was far too late. It is perfectly portrayed as minimized violence and transformation into second class citizens that is explained away with little or no examination. this movie was brilliant and attempts to answer the question of How did this happen?

so frustrated hearing you speak. Fascism did not destroy these people. Their own dysfunction did them in. Fascism was the outward expression of their self deception and dissociation.

I disagree about "the Nazi stuff just doesn't need to be there". That is what gives the film weight. We live our own lives in a box (like Bowles) while the world transforms around us and we often don't take notice of the larger events happening because of our navel gazing. And today we have a parallel (well, a tenuous parallel) with our lives and social media and influencers and how obsessed some are with social media as fascism and brutality seem to be gaining a foothold geopolitically while many are oblivious to the consequences living a life focused only our ourselves and our interests.

One of the great overlooked works of pure horror. Saw it a few days after trump got elected, and during intermission no one made a sound in the lobby. It was uncanny. When it ended, everyone clapped politely and walked to the parking like theyd been bludgeoned.

"Mein Herr" is, as every rendition tells you, pronounced "Mine Hair"--perfectly easy for Anglophone tongues.

The idea of the ending, an exuberant "life is a cabaret" number, is irony. Sally gives up the chance for romance and motherhood, comes in early in the morning after having an abortion, and then goes on that night singing exuberantly, which is a metaphor for "while the fireman fiddles, the barn will burn;" while "no one was looking," Hitler and the Nazis came to power, with everyone in a state of denial. Sally puts the emphasis on her "good-time Charlie" identity, once again, and her despair and desperation are the contrast to the "what-the-hell" "Cabaret" song, "when I go, I'm going like Elsie" -- someone who literally died from "too much pills and liquor" (which is why Liza, in more recent years, changed the lyrics to "I"m NOT going like Elsie" as an homage to her own substance recovery process). But maybe Sally was right to give up marriage and motherhood, knowing "how long would it be" before she hooks up impulsively with someone who promises an escape from banal suburban life, and Brian/Cliff/Christopher Isherwood hooks up with some (male) hottie and ditches the wife and kid(s). It is in that state that she throws in the towel, apart from her absent father who stood her up, her mother so absent she isn't even depicted (except in the "Don't Tell Mama" song from the stage show), her bisexual/gay lover she has zero future with, and she's left with only vague hopes of being a "great film star" if she can just belt "Cabaret" to some sleazy producer in the Klub who can whisk her away. The song "Cabaret" has to be understood in that context, not just a sing-songy feel-good musical number; it's actually kind of sad, pathetic, and chilling -- the ending I'm sure Fosse wanted. (Not unlike "Everything is Coming Up Roses" in "Gypsy", when you realize how psychotically delusional Mama Rose really is, singing that when everything is falling apart; there's a dotted-line connection between those two characters, songs, and situations.) How many of us have been singing "Cabaret" while the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, and Trump/Republicans are poised to feed all of us the barely sugar-coated poison of Neo-Nazi Fascism, all over again, right here? Christopher Isherwood (original author of the largely real-life stories) got out of Berlin while the gettin' was good. Smart guy. He later ("Christopher and His Kind") wrote how the Nazis tolerated the gay bars in Berlin for a while, just keenly observing, then outlawed them, then all the boyz were either drafted, volunteered to support the new regime, fled the country, or were murdered in camps. He ended up in Santa Monica in his 40s on the beach and hooked up with a 16-year-old he was with for about 40 years until he died. Life is a cabaret, old chum, and I love a Cabaret.

When I performed “if you could see her” everyone was laughing and this one woman leaned to her husband saying “THIS IS HILARIOUS” I looked right at her and said the last line of the song and we did a vaudeville ending where no one clapped.

The 2014 versions are so much better than the older ones

Im very late to this video, but I just want to say, cabaret is so emotionally devastating. There is no redemption, no reassurance or happy ending, it just ends and it leaves things to the imagination and that is truly what I crave while watching shows

I wonder why the 1968 London version of Cabaret with Judi Dench as Sally Bowleys didn't get a mention. Maybe there isn't a video version of the whole show to see these
days - but there are some videos of Judi Dench in rehearsal and singing some of the songs. This was Judi's first singing role and she was described as the Best Sally Bowleys ever!

First, Andrew says the movie Sally " misses the point ". Uh, that IS the point. She continues to party on while ignoring what's happening around he
Next y'all pick a review to match your opinions rather than one representative of the ones written at the time. Remember, the movie did win multipleOscar's, including Best Director, losing Best Picture to The Godfather .
And Bri pronounced nuance as nuisance?
Hard to take you guys seriously, but maybe that's your point

To add to my earlier comment: Also read most of Isherwoods other fictional works such as The World in Evening, Down There on a Visit and A Single Man to gain some post WW2 historical perspectives and his partnering with the gorgeous and talented artist Don Bachardy. American LGBT peoples & history owes those two a lot of credit for their contributions and personal perspectives on the early gay liberation movement.

EVIL EIDELWEISS

I love this rating. You all are spot on.

I just finished reading “Goodbye to Berlin” yesterday. The book itself really rarely mentions Nazism until the last few pages where it’s the main focus.
The 1972 movie tried to merge the original book and the musical into one. I found many similarities and nods to the book in this movie, which is probably why it seems like the “Nazi thing” is an afterthought.
It’s not meant to be. It’s just that you’re supposed to see how things are slowly progressing. I think the movie did well at showing that.