Liza Minnelli And Bob Fosse Joins Forces For Thoughtful Musical Fare In Cabaret

The idea of Liza Minelli and the late great Bob Fosse teaming up feels like as natural a pairing as peanut butter and jelly or dogs and cuteness or Donald Trump and racism. EGOT winner Liza Minnelli most certainly knows her way around a musical number while you'd be hard pressed to find individuals in American pop culture from any era more adept at the art of dancing than Mr. Bob Fosse, whose knowledge of how to pull off the most exquisite dance moves seemed to come as naturally to him as breathing air. Such a promising pairing came to pass in the 1972 musical drama Cabaret, which also managed to rope in Michael York into the proceedings.


Brian Roberts (Michael York) has come to Berlin, Germany to fine-tune his English and get some education, and in doing so, he takes up residence with Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), a singer/dancer at a local cabaret. Sally is an outspoken individual who's very much not about keeping her thoughts to herself, a sharp contrast to the more soft-spoken and reserved Brian. Despite their dueling personalities, Sally and Brian do manage to spark up a romance, one that manages to be a welcome departure from the three more disastrous romantic experiences with women Brian Roberts has had in the past.

While the two fall in love, something more ominous rises up in Berlin, Germany...the ascension to power and prominence of Nazi forces, which brings incredibly justified fear to Brian and Sally's Jewish colleagues. This terrifyingly subdued rise to power plays as the backdrop to the romantic highs and lows Brian and Sally deal with, including the arrival of a billionaire that attracts the sexual affections of both of our lead characters. The growing ambitions of Nazi forces also plays as a more subdued background to various interludes that depict The Master Of Ceremonies (Joel Grey) engaging in highly energetic and peppy musical numbers.

There's a recurring motif in Cabaret to have darker plot elements almost sneakily co-exist amidst seemingly brighter circumstances. For instance, the Nazi's do sometimes make their presence in the plot by way of darker events, such as three despicable Nazi thugs killing a poor doggie, but their mostly just accepted by many (though not by Brian and Sally) as everyday occurrences in Germany, with one Nazi even starting up a stirring song in a crowded area that a large swath of passerby's join in. That's an eerily accurate depiction of how such malevolent forces rise to power, by starting out as non-intrusive forces of nature that build up their hate and power over time to amass disturbing amounts of power.

To play off that darker plot material, we have the romance between Brian and Sally, which frequently serves as a sweet remedy to the hideous real world events mounting around them. Even here though, darker material crops up in seemingly serene circumstances, as the introduction of a wealthy man who can take them on glorious vacations and elaborate shopping trips manages to also cause distress in their relationship. Something that's a supposed miracle is bound to have its own distressing darker undercurrent in the world of Cabaret which creates this absorbing world that effortlessly zig-zags between the elaborate and flashy as well as the quietly tragic.

The most upbeat elements of Cabaret handily come from two sources; Liza Minnelli's performance and the various musical numbers from The Master Of Ceremonies. Minnelli, for her part, is excellent in the lead role, playing the exuberant and carefree attitude of her character off in an appropriately natural manner which leads to plenty of fun dialogue readings and deliveries on her part. Meanwhile, the various songs are an absolute treat, as they merge Bob Fosse's incredibly distinctive choreography with sharp lyrics that create plenty of tunes I'm still humming. There's plenty of memorable toe-tapping musical numbers in Cabaret to be sure but it may be the darker plot elements that lend some real substance to the already extremely entertaining endeavor.