Cabaret (Film) Bob Fosse

Box office

The film opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City on February 13, 1972, with a single performance benefit grossing $2,538.[49] It started regular showings at the Ziegfeld from February 14, grossing $8,684 in its opening day, and a house record $80,278 for the week.[50][49] It grossed another $165,038 from 6 other theatres in 6 key cities reported by Variety, placing it tenth at the US box office.[51] After seven months of release, it had grossed $5.3 million in the New York metropolitan area. Variety estimated that this represented 30% of the film's total compared to the normal 15% for the market, one of the few big-budget films to perform much better in New York.[52] Based on this estimate, the film had grossed around $17 million. By year end, Variety reported that it had earned theatrical rentals of $10,885,000, making it the eighth most successful film of the year.[53] Following the film's success at the Academy Awards in March 1973, it reached number one at the US box office with a gross of $1,880,000 for the week, a record for Allied Artists.[54][55] It remained number one for a second week.[56] By May 1973, the film had earned rentals of $16 million in the United States and Canada and $7 million in other countries and reported a profit of $4,904,000.[1] By the end of 1973, Variety had updated the film's rentals in the United States and Canada to $18,175,000.[57]

Critical reception

Contemporary reviews

Variety claimed the film received the most "sugary" reviews of the year.[58] Roger Ebert gave a positive review in January 1972, saying: "This is no ordinary musical. Part of its success comes because it doesn't fall for the old cliché 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."[8]

A.D. Murphy of Variety wrote "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."[3]

Roger Greenspun of The New York Times wrote in February 1972 that "Cabaret is one of those immensely gratifying imperfect works in which from beginning to end you can literally feel a movie coming to life."[5] Likewise, Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote a review that same month in which she applauded the film:

"A great movie musical. Taking its form from political cabaret, it's a satire of temptations. In a prodigious balancing act, Bob Fosse, the choreographer-director, keeps the period—Berlin, 1931—at a cool distance. We see the decadence as garish and sleazy; yet we also see the animal energy in it—everything seems to become sexualized. The movie does not exploit decadence; rather, it gives it its due. With Joel Grey as our devil-doll host—the master of ceremonies—and Liza Minnelli (in her first singing role on the screen) as exuberant, corruptible Sally Bowles, chasing after the life of a headliner no matter what; Minnelli has such gaiety and electricity that she becomes a star before our eyes."[9]

Reaction of Isherwood and others

Although Cabaret (1972) was well received by film critics upon its release,[5][8][3][9] author Christopher Isherwood and other persons upon whom the film's characters were based were less receptive towards the cinematic adaptation.[14][25]: 63  Isherwood himself was critical of the 1972 film due to what he perceived as its negative portrayal of homosexuality:

"In the film of Cabaret, the male lead is called Brian Roberts. He is a bisexual Englishman; he has an affair with Sally and, later, with one of Sally's lovers, a German baron...Brian's homosexual tendency is treated as an indecent but comic weakness to be snickered at, like bed-wetting."[25]: 63 

Similarly, Isherwood's friend Jean Ross—upon whom the character of Sally Bowles was based[59]: 26 —was ambivalent about the film.[60]: 70  She felt the depiction of 1930s Berlin "was quite, quite different" from reality.[61]: 33–34  Nevertheless, she conceded that the depiction of their social circle of British expatriates as pleasure-seeking libertines was accurate: "We were all utterly against the bourgeois standards of our parents' generation. That's what took us to [Weimar-era] Berlin. The climate was freer there."[61]: 33–34  Such ambivalence towards Cabaret (1972) was not unique among Isherwood's circle.[14]

The poet Stephen Spender lamented how Cabaret (1972) glossed over Weimar Berlin's crushing poverty:

"There is not a single meal, or club, in the movie Cabaret, that Christopher [Isherwood] and I could have afforded [in 1931]. What we mostly knew was the Berlin of poverty, unemployment, political demonstrations and street fighting between forces of the extreme left and the extreme right."[14]

Both Spender and Ross contended that the 1972 film and 1966 Broadway musical deleteriously glamorized the harsh realities of the 1930s Weimar era.[14][61]: 33–34 

Retrospective reviews

In 2002, Jamie Russell of the BBC wrote that the film was "the first musical ever to be given an X certificate, Bob Fosse's Cabaret launched Liza Minnelli into Hollywood superstardom and re-invented the musical for the Age of Aquarius."[37] In 2013, 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."[62]

Controversies

Although less explicit compared with other films made in the 1970s, Cabaret dealt explicitly with topics like corruption, sexual ambiguity, false dreams, and Nazism. Tim Dirks at Filmsite.org notes: "The sexually-charged, semi-controversial, kinky musical was the first one ever to be given an X rating (although later re-rated) with its numerous sexual flings and hedonistic club life. There was considerable sexual innuendo, profanity, casual sex talk (homosexual and heterosexual), some evidence of anti-Semitism, and even an abortion in the film."[63] It was also rated X in the UK and later re-rated as 15.[37][64]

On the topic of Nazism, there was little consensus among critics about the possibly fascist implications of the film and play. However, critic Steven Belletto wrote a critique of Cabaret in the Criticism journal, published by Wayne State University Press, in which he highlighted the anti-fascist themes in the film present both within and outside of the musical acts. According to Belletto, "despite the ways that the film has been understood by a variety of critics, [Cabaret] rejects the logic of fascist certainty by staging various numbers committed to irony and ambiguity."[41]

The "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" scene was controversial, with Kander and Ebb, both of whom were Jewish, sometimes being wrongly accused of using a historical Nazi song.[65] According to an article in Variety in November 1976, the film was censored in West Berlin when it was first released there theatrically, with the sequence featuring the Hitler Youth singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" having been deleted.[6] This elimination was made "because of the feeling that it might stir up resentments in the audience by showing the sympathizers for the Nazi movement during the '30s."[6] The sequence was restored, however, when the film was shown on West German television on November 7, 1976.[6]

Another topic of discussion was the song "If You Could See Her",[66] which closed with the line: "If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn't look Jewish at all." The point of the song was showing anti-Semitism as it begins to run rampant in Berlin, but there were a number of Jewish groups who interpreted the lyrics differently.[67]

Accolades

Cabaret earned a total of ten Academy Award nominations (winning eight of them) and holds the record for most Academy Awards for a film that did not also win Best Picture.[6][68]

Shortly before the Academy Awards, Bob Fosse won two Tony Awards for directing and choreographing Pippin, his biggest stage hit. Months later, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for choreographing and directing Liza Minnelli's television special Liza with a Z, he became the first director to win all three awards in one year.

American Film Institute recognition

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs
  • Cabaret – No. 18
• AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals – No. 5
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – No. 63

National Film Registry

Inducted into the National Film Registry in 1995 among a list of 25 Films that year.[10]