Cabaret

Name: Cabaret
Genre: Drama, Romance, Music, Musical
Released: February 13, 1972
Duration: 124 min
Rating: 80
Cast: Liza Minnelli, Michael York

1972

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 8 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Universal acclaim based on 79 Ratings

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8.1	User Score Universal acclaim based on 79 Ratings

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Cabaret

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Movie Details & Credits

Allied Artists Pictures | Release Date: February 13, 1972 | PG

Starring: Liza Minnelli, Michael York

Summary: Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin, starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles (Minnelli) and an impish emcee (Grey) sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force. (Warner Bros.)

Director: Bob Fosse

Genre(s): Drama, Romance, Music, Musical

Rating: PG

Runtime: 124 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Staff (Not Credited)

Minnelli and Grey sparkle, and the Fosse flash is everywhere in evidence. Read full review

100

TV Guide Magazine Staff (Not Credited)

Chilling Fosse vision of Weimar Berlin, stylishly directed and choreographed, featuring a show-stopping musical performance by Minnelli, Grey's unforgettable emcee and thoughtful acting from Michael York. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

It is literate, bawdy, sophisticated, sensual, cynical, heart-warming, and disturbingly thought-provoking. Read full review

Roger Greenspun

Cabaret is one of those immensely gratifying imperfect works in which from beginning to end you can literally feel a movie coming to life. Read full review

Empire Kim Newman

It stands as a hugely enjoyable, occasionally chilling, musical. Read full review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

It's entertaining and stylish, though maybe not quite as serious as it wants to be. Read full review

Jay Cocks

By the time Scenarist Allen and Director Fosse have wrung them out, what's left - with one exception - is mostly slack and sour. Read full review

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User Reviews

CritiqueGirl

Mar 2, 2011

Outstanding. No one can sing like Liza. Mein Heir is belted out and is my favorite song. Very funny, off color, sad and thought provoking knowing what is to come to unique everyday people in their unique everyday lives.

3 of 4 users found this helpful31

Cabaret666

Sep 12, 2012

My favourite movie of all time!

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

LoloTV

Sep 23, 2012

An amazing film like no other, "Cabaret" blows it all from story depht, performances and acting to amazing cinematography and art direction. Amazing, amazing, amazing.

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

tom_prairie

Jun 8, 2012

An amazing film, rich with symbolism and meaning, and also a completely diagetic score, which I consider to be a nice change to regular movie musicals. The songs and Minnelli's portrayal of Sally Bowls are the obvious highlights but Fritz Wepper (Fritz) and Marisa Berenson (Natalia) shine inAn amazing film, rich with symbolism and meaning, and also a completely diagetic score, which I consider to be a nice change to regular movie musicals. The songs and Minnelli's portrayal of Sally Bowls are the obvious highlights but Fritz Wepper (Fritz) and Marisa Berenson (Natalia) shine in their roles.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

lasttimeisaw

Apr 9, 2013

A timeless classic! The musical numbers alone are superlative, even the 30-years-younger CHICAGO (2002, 8/10) pales in comparison. My very first Bob Fosse’s film, certainly the film gained its classic fame as the biggest winner of the Oscar in 1973, with 8 wins (including BEST DIRECTOR,A timeless classic! The musical numbers alone are superlative, even the 30-years-younger CHICAGO (2002, 8/10) pales in comparison. My very first Bob Fosse’s film, certainly the film gained its classic fame as the biggest winner of the Oscar in 1973, with 8 wins (including BEST DIRECTOR, LEADING ACTRESS and SUPPORTING ACTOR) and nearly usurped the BEST PICTURE trophy from THE GODFATHER (1972, 9/10), if it had been so, it would be inflicted with much notorious backfire in the film history, but the film itself is an unerring gem among the undying musical genre, my first viewing is a thoroughly exultant experience, and cut and dried, it’s on my guilty-pleasure list.

It is my first Liza Minnelli’s film as well, the cabaret’s “international sensation” Sally Bowles, an innocuous vamp, Liza grants her role a disarming vitality and quaintly resembles a bobbed Anne Hathaway doppelgänger, not only radiates her grandeur in rendering her doughty-yet-alluring show tunes (she is born to do it), her portrayal of Sally personal life is equally (if not more) affecting, her doe-eyed naivety and unrestrained zest for life, for love, for fame elevate her character as the master of her own fate, her sacrifice may not gain concurrence from motley views of life, but a full obeisance to her independence and pluck is duly earned.

Michael York, behind his gawky effeminacy, plunges himself into a more contentious venture, Brian Roberts, his character’s bookish bi-sexual temperament is a provocative taboo on big screen (like since ever) and the implicit ménage trois temptation (with Sally and the suave Helmut Griem, whose gentrified debonair is utterly irresistible) has been simmering to the perfect temperature, undergirds a manifestation of initiating a sex-liberation wave (germane to the 70s era while against the Nazi-rising milieu in the film).

There is a subplot dealing with a bromide of a down-and-out German guy’s infatuation with a rich but prude Jewish girl, there is an ironic twist near the end, however never quite manages to steal the limelight from Sally and Bri, but Marisa Berenson’s placid performance is still worthy of backslapping (the dichotomy of women’s images is a trifle stale though).

Joel Grey, as the so called “Master of Ceremonies” and won an Oscar (against three fellows from THE GODFATHER), serves only as the performer in the film, no clear attachment with the plot, his musical set pieces are burlesque, risqué but entertaining to the bone, with a strenuous mimicry of German accent, it is a hard-earned honour, although I don’t understand how Al Pacino could lose at any rate.

The film drops its curtain right before the prevalence of Nazi’s atrocity, the ending with the vague reflections of Third Reich audience occupying the place has sublimated the materialistic razzle-dazzle onto an eerily ominous scope which the film has no interest to tamper but the audiences will intuit what will happen next. A great windup, neat and potent!… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Tony

Apr 25, 2011

"Maybe This Time" was certainly a highlight, and Liza was pretty great, but having never seen this before I can't say that I was blown away. Some of the plot points were surprisingly ahead of its time, and it's production values were impressive, but it just didn't emotionally resonate with me.

4 of 5 users found this helpful41

Spangle

Mar 20, 2017

After not liking All That Jazz, my expectations for Cabaret were realistic. I knew that it was possible Bob Fosse's directing style was simply not something I was programmed to enjoy. The end result is a film that seems inconclusive. Definitely more up my alley than All That Jazz, Cabaret isAfter not liking All That Jazz, my expectations for Cabaret were realistic. I knew that it was possible Bob Fosse's directing style was simply not something I was programmed to enjoy. The end result is a film that seems inconclusive. Definitely more up my alley than All That Jazz, Cabaret is still not a film I would quite say I liked. More-or-less, it is an above average musical (in my books) that has some positives and some drawbacks that leave it being a pretty muddled and mixed bag at the end of the day.

First, the negatives. Though La La Land has come under fire for its weak or bad singing from Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, it is abundantly clear to myself that both Stone and Gosling turn in better singing performances than Liza Minnelli and especially Joel Grey in Cabaret. Neither impress, instead turning in bland performances of bland songs such as "Money, Money" or "Two Ladies" (for Grey). Yes, both are legends - especially Minnelli - but neither really struck me as being worthy of the praise they receive for this film on the singing side of things. Minnelli is largely ineffectual and lacks the punch needed for these musical numbers, instead just feeling quite robotic and missing the gravitas necessary to pull of the songs. Fortunately for her, this is not all her fault as some of the song performed in the cabaret are just very bad. Some have great lyrics and melodies, other are just overtly risque for no other value. The former are exclusively songs with Minnelli. The latter are reserved for Grey who is just flat-out grating to watch. He is too exuberant and boisterous. His singing is comically bad throughout and seems to be played out for laughs with his weird lip movements than for any actual singing ability. If people say Gosling is bad in La La Land, then Grey needs his due for being a bad singer in Cabaret. By the end of the film, however, my favorite song was the one not including either of them and given that they were the stars and the main attractions on the musical side, this seems quite alarming.

Second, the editing is quite bad. Just as in All That Jazz, Fosse goes cut happy at points. Jumping rapidly from one image to the next, the film just turns into a blur at parts. While it is supposed to represent the speed at which everything is occurring, it unfortunately has the side effect of rendering those moments entirely unwatchable and distracting. All That Jazz had the same issue with these rapid cuts that distract more than they enhance. It is clearly a style employed by Fosse that simply does not work in my view. While not too plentiful, the moments are bad enough and occur often enough to be worth mentioning. Other than these, the editing is fine. Nothing great and nothing awful. It cuts when it should and is quite cohesive as a final product, but those few moments unfortunately leave a lot to be desired.

In the mixed, not a pro and not a con, section we have the film's sexuality. Openly confronting society's reservations about open sexuality, LGBT persons, and various other sexual taboos, Cabaret is a crucially important film. It shows that those who cross dress, are trans, are gay, are bi, or are lesbians, are just people too. They want to have fun, they cry, they want to love, and they want to laugh all the same. Cabaret, for this, is boundary shattering. It is impressively open about these topics to the point that it may be too much. Mind you, I am not saying it is too risque or that I am a prude. Rather, it feels as though the film tries too hard to push these boundaries. It includes so many topics and, by the end, it feels like the film is just sitting there and judging the audience for not accepting like one of those SNL sketches about high school theatre with the film screaming out, "This is normal and your world view is small." While I agree with its message of acceptance against its backdrop of the rise in Nazism, it feels like it pours it on a bit thick.

On the positive side of things, some songs really stand out. Though I criticized Minnelli and Grey before, allow me to walk some of those comments back in praising some of their songs. For Grey, "If You Could See Her" is beautifully sung, catchy, and incredibly entertaining. It is also thematically relevant with a great take on accepting a person for who they are and not just judging a book by its cover. For Minnelli, "Mein Herr" and "Maybe This Time" are real standouts. The former features solid singing, but tremendous choreography by Fosse. The latter is gorgeously written with a great mournful and longing delivery by Minnelli on the vocal side of things. Yet, bar none, the highlight of the film is "Tomorrow Belongs to Me". Absolutely chilling to watch be sung by a boy in a Nazi uniform and joined in by similar white people, the sequence is brilliantly put together by Fosse and haunting. The singing and lyrics are terrific, but the moment it signifies is the real highlight and shows the perfect blend of music… Expand

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

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