Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Cabaret, the famous movie about decadent life in Berlin, in the Kit Kat Klub


Kit Kat Klub
Originally uploaded by Altarena Playhouse
Cabaret is a 1972 American musical film directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey. The film is set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931, says Wiipedia, under the ominous presence of the growing National Socialist Party.

A female club entertainer in Weimar Republic era Berlin romances two men while the Nazi Party rises to power around them, says IMDB.com.
Sally Bowles, an American singer in 1930s Berlin, fall in love with Brian. They are both seduced by Max, a rich playboy. Sally becomes pregnant, and Brian offers to marry her... All the characters are linked by the Kit-Kat club, a nightspot where Sally sings.

A reviewer wrote, "On a historical level, a personal-story level, and as pure entertainment "Cabaret" works perfectly. The scene is Berlin, Germany, only two years before Hitler would come to total power. It is the Berlin that Christopher Isherwood lived in and wrote about: poverty, drug and alcohol escapism, criminals, sleazebags, fighting in the streets, venereal disease, the prostitution of both sexes, the desperation to escape through the film industry, the temporary escape from the harshness of life in "naughty" nightclubs like The Kit Kat Club, which encapsulates it all. It's a bad scene, and a good example of, perhaps, why so many Germans felt in need of a Hitler. There's not a single verbal reference to Hitler, and yet the presence of the growing Nazi movement all around these decadent misfits is ever present in this film. But you can't blame any of these apolitical people for that. Liza Minelli and Michael York's characters are so needy, so desperate just to find some personal happiness in life. They can't be bothered with what's going on in the bigger picture. Except for the Master Of Ceremonies at the Club: Joel Grey's character is a semi-supernatural all-seeing character, mocking, seeming to somehow know EXACTLY the further destruction Germany's headed for. His scary all-knowing grinning face pops in regularly to remind us."

The movie won 8 Oscars and numerous additional awards in 1973.

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