Cabaret (1972 film)

Cabaret is a 1972 musical film directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey.[3]  The film is set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931, under the ominous presence of the growing Nazi Party.

The film is loosely based on the 1966 Broadway musical Cabaret by Kander and Ebb, which was adapted from the novelThe Berlin Stories (1939) by Christopher Isherwood and the 1951 play I Am a Camera adapted from the same book. Only a few numbers from the stage score were used for the film; Kander and Ebb wrote new ones to replace those that were discarded. In the traditional manner of musical theater, every significant character in the stage version sings to express their own emotion and to advance the plot. In the film version, the musical numbers are entirely diegetic, taking place inside the club, with one exception ("Tomorrow Belongs to Me"), the only song not sung by either the Emcee and/or Sally. In the sexually charged "Two Ladies", about menage-a-trois, the emcee is joined by two of the Kit Kat girls, who sing part of the song.

Cabaret holds the record for most Academy Award wins in a single year without winning the highest honor, Best Picture, with eight awards. The film won the Academy Award for Best Director for Bob Fosse, Best Actress for Liza Minnelli, Best Supporting Actor for Joel Grey, and five more technical awards. It lost the Best Picture award to The Godfather, which won three awards.



Contents
[hide]  *1 Plot  ==Plot[ edit] == In 1931 Berlin, young American Sally Bowles performs at the Kit Kat Klub. A new British arrival in the city, Brian Roberts, moves into the boarding house where Sally lives. A reserved academic and writer, Brian gives English lessons to earn a living while completing his doctorate in Philosophy. Sally tries seducing Brian and suspects he may be gay. Brian tells Sally that on three previous occasions he has tried to have physical relationships with women, all of which failed. They become friends, and Brian witnesses Sally's anarchic, bohemian life in the last days of the German Weimar Republic. Sally and Brian become lovers despite their earlier reservations; they conclude that his previous failures with women were because they were "the wrong three girls".
 * 2 Cast
 * 3 Production
 * 3.1 Pre-production
 * 3.2 Casting
 * 3.3 Filming
 * 3.4 Narrative and news reading
 * 4 Differences between film and stage version
 * 5 Soundtrack
 * 6 Release
 * 6.1 Critical reaction
 * 6.2 Accolades
 * 6.3 Home video
 * 7 See also
 * 8 References
 * 9 Bibliography
 * 10 External links

Sally befriends Maximilian von Heune, a rich playboy baron who takes her and Brian to his country estate; it becomes ambiguous which of the duo Max is seducing. After a sexual experience with Brian, Max loses interest in the two and departs for Argentina. During an argument, when Sally tells Brian that she has been having sex with Max, Brian reveals that he has as well. Brian and Sally later reconcile, and Sally reveals that Max left them money.

Sally learns that she is pregnant, but is unsure of the father. Brian offers to marry her and take her back to his university life in Cambridge. After a picnic between Sally and Brian in which Brian acts distant and disinterested, Sally starts to doubt continuing with the pregnancy, and ultimately has an abortion. When Brian confronts her, she shares her fears and the two reach an understanding. Brian departs for England and Sally continues her life in Berlin, embedding herself in the Kit Kat Club. ==Cast[ edit] == ==Production<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == ===Pre-production<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">In 1971, Bob Fosse learned through Harold Prince, director of the original Broadway production, that Cy Feuer was producing a film adaptation of Cabaret through ABC Pictures and Allied Artists. Determined to direct the film, Fosse urged Feuer to hire him. Chief executives Manny Wolf and Marty Baum preferred a bigger name director such as Joseph Mankiewicz or Gene Kelly. That Fosse had directed the unsuccessful film adaptation of Sweet Charity gave Wolf and Baum pause. Feuer appealed to the studio heads, citing Fosse’s talent for staging and shooting musical numbers, adding that if inordinate attention was given to filming the book scenes at the expense of the musical numbers, the whole film could fail. Fosse was ultimately hired. Over the next months, Fosse met with previously hired writer Jay Presson Allen to discuss the screenplay. Dissatisfied with Allen's script, he hired Hugh Wheeler to rewrite and revise her work. Wheeler is referred to as a "research consultant" while Allen retains screenwriting credit. The final script was based less on Joe Masteroff's original book of the stage version, and more on The Berlin Stories and I Am a Camera.
 * Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles
 * Michael York as Brian Roberts
 * Joel Grey as the Emcee
 * Helmut Griem as Maximilian von Heune
 * Fritz Wepper as Fritz Wendel
 * Marisa Berenson as Natalia Landauer
 * Helen Vita as Fräulein Kost
 * Oliver Collignon (Mark Lambert, singing voice)<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-4" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[4]  as Nazi youth

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">Fosse and Feuer traveled to Germany, where producers chose to shoot the film, in order to finish assembling the film crew. During this time, Fosse highly recommended Robert Surtees for cinematographer, but Feuer and the top executives saw Surtees’ work on Sweet Charity as one of the film’s many artistic problems. Producers eventually chose British cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth. Designers Rolf Zehetbauer, Hans Jürgen Kiebach and Herbert Strabel served as production designers. Charlotte Flemming designed costumes. Fosse dancer Kathy Doby and John Sharpe were brought on as Fosse’s dance aides. Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles===Casting<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">Feuer had cast Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles and Joel Grey (reprising his stage role) long before Fosse was attached to the project. Fosse was given the option of using Grey as Emcee or walking away from the production. Fosse hired Michael York as Sally Bowles’ openly bisexual love interest. Several smaller roles, as well as the dancers in the film, were eventually cast in Germany. ===Filming<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">Rehearsals and filming took place entirely in Germany. For reasons of economy, indoor scenes were shot at Bavaria Film Studios in Grünwald, outside Munich. Location shooting took place in and around Munich and Berlin, and in Schleswig-Holsteinand Saxony. Editing was done in Los Angeles before the eventual theatrical release in February 1972. ===Narrative and news reading<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">Although the songs throughout the film allude to and advance the narrative, every song except "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" is executed in the context of a Kit Kat Klub performance. The voice heard on the radio reading the news throughout the film in German was that of associate producer Harold Nebenzal, whose father Seymour Nebenzahl made such notable Weimar films as M (1931), Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), and Threepenny Opera (1931). ==Differences between film and stage version<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">The film is significantly different from the Broadway musical. In both The Berlin Stories and I Am a Camera, Sally Bowles is American (as was the actual woman upon whom Isherwood based the character), just as she is in the musical's film version. The stage version is the only version that makes her British. The character of Cliff Bradshaw was renamed Brian Roberts and made British (as was Isherwood upon whom Bradshaw was based). In the film version of Cabaret he is openly bisexual, whereas in The Berlin Stories and I Am a Camera the character is either asexual or of ambiguous sexuality. In the original stage version of Cabaret the character is notably heterosexual. The characters and plot lines involving Fritz, Natalia and Max do not exist in the stage version, and a minor character named Max in the stage version, the owner of the Kit Kat Club, bears no relation to the character in the film. Those plot points were drawn from The Berlin Stories and I Am a Camera. While in the stage version (along with Isherwood's original story), Sally is a terrible singer, who thinks she's better than she is (which prevents her from pursuing her ambition as an actress), in the film she is far more skilled.<sup class="noprint Inline-Template Template-Fact" style="line-height:1;font-size:11.1999998092651px;white-space:nowrap;">[citation needed]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">Fosse cut several of the songs, leaving only those that are sung within the confines of the Kit Kat Klub, and "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" - sung in a beer garden. (In the stage musical, it is sung first by the cabaret boys and then at a private party.) Kander and Ebb wrote several new songs for the movie and removed others; "Don't Tell Mama" was replaced by "Mein Herr", and "The Money Song" (retained in an instrumental version as "Sitting Pretty") was replaced by "Money, Money". "Mein Herr" and "Money, Money", which were composed for the film version were added to performances of the stage musical alongside the original numbers. The song "Maybe This Time", which Sally performs at the cabaret, was not written for the film. Kander and Ebb had written it years earlier for Kaye Ballard, thus it was ineligible for an Academy Award nomination. Although "Don't Tell Mama" and "Married" were removed as performed musical numbers, both were used in the film. The former's bridge section appears as instrumental music played on Sally's gramophone; the latter is initially played on the piano in Fraulein Schneider's parlor and later heard on Sally's gramophone in a German translation ("Heiraten") sung by cabaret singer Greta Keller.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">Several characters were cut from the film (including Herr Schultz) and Fraulein Schneider's part was greatly reduced, with her romantic subplot removed. Several characters from Isherwood's original stories were put back in. The entire score was re-orchestrated, with all the numbers being accompanied by the stage band.<sup class="noprint Inline-Template Template-Fact" style="line-height:1;font-size:11.1999998092651px;white-space:nowrap;">[citation needed] ==Soundtrack<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">All songs written and composed by John Kander and Fred Ebb. <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">The following songs from the original Broadway production were omitted from the film version: "So What?", "Don't Tell Mama", "Telephone Song", "Perfectly Marvelous", "Why Should I Wake Up?", "The Money Song" (disparate from "Money, Money"), "It Couldn't Please Me More", "Meeskite" and "What Would You Do?" ==Release<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">The film was immediately successful at the box office. By May 1973 it had earned rentals of $4.5 million in North America and $3.5 million in other countries and reported a profit of $2,452,000.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-variety_1-1" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[1] ===Critical reaction<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">The film currently holds a 97% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus "Great performances and evocative musical numbers help Cabaret secure its status as a stylish, socially conscious classic".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-7" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[7]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">In 1995, Cabaret was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2006, Cabaret ranked No. 5 on the American Film Institute's list of best musicals; the song "Cabaret" was ranked No. 18 on their 100 Years...100 Songs list in 2004. In 2007, this film ranked No. 63 on AFI's 10th anniversary list of the 100 Greatest American Movies.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">In 2013, the film critic Peter Bradshaw listed Cabaret at number one on his list of "Top 10 musicals", describing it as "satanically catchy, terrifyingly seductive ... directed and choreographed with electric style by Bob Fosse ... Cabaret is drenched in the sexiest kind of cynicism and decadent despair".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-8" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[8] ===Accolades<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards in 1973, winning a total of eight:<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Oscars1973_9-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[9]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, losing both to The Godfather. Cabaret holds the record for most Academy Awards won by a film which did not win the Best Picture award.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-10" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[10]
 * Best Director (Bob Fosse)
 * Best Actress in a Leading Role (Liza Minnelli)
 * Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Joel Grey)
 * Best Cinematography (Geoffrey Unsworth)
 * Best Film Editing (David Bretherton)
 * Best Original Song Score or Adaptation Score (Ralph Burns)
 * Best Art Direction (Rolf Zehetbauer, Hans Jürgen Kiebach, Herbert Strabel)
 * Best Sound (Robert Knudson, David Hildyard)

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">The film also won seven BAFTA Awards including Best Film, Best Direction and Best Actress as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture (Musical/Comedy). It won the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.<sup class="noprint Inline-Template Template-Fact" style="line-height:1;font-size:11.1999998092651px;white-space:nowrap;">[citation needed] The making of Cabaret is recounted in Cabaret (Music on Film) by Stephen Tropiano (Limelight Books, 2011). ===Home video<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">The film was first released to DVD in 1998. There have been subsequent releases in 2003, 2008, and 2012. The film's international ancillary distribution rights are owned by ABC (currently part of The Walt Disney Company), while [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros. Warner Bros.] (which inherited the film from Lorimar, Allied Artists' successor-in-interest) has domestic distribution rights. Today, Warner shares the film's copyright with production partner ABC. Fremantle Media (owners of UK DVD rights under license from ABC/Disney) planned a Blu-ray release of the film in 2008 or 2009, but have since announced they no longer plan to do so.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">In April 2012, Warner unveiled a 40th Anniversary screening of the new restoration of the film. Cabaret has been sold on standard-definition DVD from Warner Bros. But it was unavailable in high-def or for digital presentation because of a vertical scratch that ran through 1,000 feet, or 10 minutes, of one of its reels, said Ned Price, vice president of mastering and restoration for Warner Bros. The damage apparently was caused by a piece of dirt that had rolled through the length of the reel, starting with a scene in which York's character has a confrontation with a pro-Nazi boarding house resident, and cut into the emulsion. With the damaged images digitally "painted out" using bits from surrounding areas, "the difficult part was matching the grain structure so the fix was invisible". After automated digital repair attempts failed, the 1,000 feet of damaged film was hand painted using a computer stylus.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-11" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[11]