| | | "Winner of 8 Academy Award, Including Best Acress."
Features: DVD, Slip Sleeve
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome to Cabaret. The winner of eight Academy Awards, it boasts a score by the legendary songwriting partnership behind another film that would energize the movie musical genre with equal razzle-dazzle 30 years later: Chicago's John Kander and Fred Ebb.Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin, starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) and an impish emcee (Joel Grey) sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force. Cabaret caught lightning (and won Oscars) for Minnelli, Grey and director Bob Fosse, who shaped a triumph of style and substance. Come to this Cabaret, old chum. You'll never want to leave.
"Much more than just a terriffic musical, Cabaret delves naturally into the politics surrounding Hitler's rise to power..." Damian Cannon, Movie Reviews
"An exquisitely sculpted milestone in the history of the film musical." Los Angeles Times
"A great movie musical, made, miraculously, without compromises." Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
"This viscerally powerful, deliriously inspired musical stands the test of time, and then some." Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
"Liza Minnelli is revelatory as cabaret dancer Sally Bowles." Rick Curnutte, Columbus CityScene
Editor's Note
The final shot of the hit film CABARET is a Nazi meeting reflected in a mirror, providing the chilling historical subtext for this groundbreaking musical movie, set in prewar Berlin. Not since GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) had Hollywood produced a more successful film. CABARET was a convention-shattering story that dealt with themes like bisexuality that were still under the radar in the US. Additionally, CABARET made the enormously talented Liza Minnelli an American icon. Minnelli plays Sally Bowles, an aspiring singer and dancer. The main plot revolves around her relationship with two different men and her life as a singer at the Kit Kat Klub. The film utilizes the traditional conventions of American musical theater while adding in the fiendishly painted Master of Ceremonies (Joel Grey) who comments on the proceedings through song and dance. Director Bob Fosse showcases the range of his vision as a director of stage and screen, serving as both choreographer and musical director. Based on the Kander-Ebb musical from John van Druten's play I AM A CAMERA (which, in turn, was derived from Christopher Isherwood's novel GOODBYE|TO BERLIN), CABARET was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won eight,|making it one of the most acclaimed films in movie history.
Plot Summary
Sally Bowles, a singer at the Kit Kat Klub, is an American caught up in the faux-glamour of prewar Berlin. Although Sally giddily ignores the decadence that has begun to permeate every aspect of society, her Jewish friend Natasha cannot; Natasha constantly faces persecution by Nazi authorities, and her lover has entirely hidden his Jewish identity.| But Sally continues to bury herself in her own problems: in addition to the difficulties of sharing her bisexual English lover with a wealthy German homosexual, she keeps getting more and more drawn in by the sleazy and sinister atmosphere of the Kit Kat Klub.
| Features | Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Warner |
| Release Date: 1/8/2008 |
| Original Release Date: 1972 | | Catalog ID: 1000035942 | | UPC: 00883929004058 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Widescreen 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew | Helmut Greim | | Joel Grey | | Liza Minnelli | | Michael York | | Bob Fosse - Director | | Christopher Isherwood - Based On Book By | | Cy Feuer - Producer | | David Bretherton - Editor | | Geoffrey Unsworth - Cinematographer | | Hans Jurgen Kiebach - Art Director | | Harold Nebenzal - Producer | | Jay Presson Allen - Screenplay | | Rolf Zehetbauer - Production Designer |
| Awards |
Winner (1973) | | | Golden Globe, Cabaret, Best Motion Picture - Musical/Comedy | | | Golden Globe, Liza Minnelli, Best Motion Picture Actress - Musical/Comedy | | | Golden Globe, Joel Grey, Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture | | | Oscar, Liza Minnelli, Best Actress in a Leading Role | | | Oscar, Bob Fosse, Best Director | | | Oscar, Ralph Burns, Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation | | | Oscar, Joel Grey, Best Actor in a Supporting Role | | | Oscar, Rolf Zehetbauer, et. al., Best Art Direction-Set Decoration | | | Oscar, Geoffrey Unsworth, Best Cinematography | | | Oscar, David Bretherton, Best Film Editing | | | Oscar, Robert Knudson, David Hildyard, Best Sound |
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| | Professional Reviews | Total Film
"...It's a dark, sexy beast of a film....Minnelli's Oscar-winning turn is touching and vivacious..." 08/01/2002 p.102Sight and Sound
"...[With] superb production design..." 01/01/2003 p.58 Entertainment Weekly
"...This was revolutionary stuff..." 01/11/2002 p.34 Empire
"No escapist song-and-dance extravaganza, this is a film with a heart of darkness." 02/01/2008 p.145 Variety 8 of 10
The film version of the 1966 John Kander-Fred Ebb Broadway musical Cabaret is most unusual: it is literate, bawdy, sophisticated, sensual, cynical, heart-warming, and disturbingly thought-provoking. Liza Minnelli heads a strong cast. Bob Fosse's generally excellent direction recreates the milieu of Germany some 40 years ago...The adaptation of the stage book is expertly accomplished. The basic material derives from Christopher Isherwood's Berlin stories, and a 1951 dramatic play by John Van Druten, filmed in 1955, I Am a Camera...The screenplay, which never seems to talk down to an audience while at the same time making its candid points with tasteful emphasis, returns the story to a variety of settings. The sleazy cabaret remains a major recurring set...The choice of Minnelli for the part of Sally Bowles was indeed daring. Good-hearted, quasi-sophisticated amorality and hedonism are not precisely Minnelli's professional bag, and within many scenes she seems to carom from golly-gee-whiz-down-home rusticity to something closer to the mark.
Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
"Cabaret" explores some of the same kinky territory celebrated in Visconti's "The Damned." Both movies share the general idea that the rise of the Nazi party in Germany was accompanied by a rise in bisexuality, homosexuality, sadomasochism, and assorted other activities. Taken as a generalization about a national movement, this is certainly extreme oversimplification. But taken as one approach to the darker recesses of Nazism, it may come pretty close to the mark...This is no ordinary musical. Part of its success comes because it doesn't fall for the old cliche that musicals have to make you happy. Instead of cheapening the movie version by lightening its load of despair, director Bob Fosse has gone right to the bleak heart of the material and stayed there well enough to win an Academy Award for Best Director...Liza Minnelli plays Sally Bowles so well and fully that it doesn't matter how well she sings and dances, if you see what I mean. In several musical numbers (including the stunning finale "Cabaret" number), Liza demonstrates unmistakably that she's one of the great musical performers of our time. But the heartlessness and nihilism of the character is still there, all the time, even while we're being supremely entertained. - Roger Ebert
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