Cabaret's Anniversary
On February 13, 1972, the film "Cabaret" by Bob Fosse was released in American cinemas.
The film is largely based on the theatrical musical "Cabaret" (composer John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, libretto by Joe Masteroff), staged on Broadway in 1966. This musical withstood 1165 performances and in 1967 was awarded the American Tony Theater Award. The musical "Cabaret", in turn, was based on the 1951 play "I Am a Camera" by John Van Druten. Van Druten's play, in turn, is based on the 1939 semi-autobiographical novel "Goodbye to Berlin" by British and then American writer Christopher Isherwood. In his novel, Christopher Isherwood described the relationship of a young British writer named Brian Roberts, based on Isherwood himself, with an aspiring cabaret singer named Sally Bowles when they shared a rented apartment in Berlin between 1930 and 1933. That is, in the very period of the formation of fascism in Germany.
The image of Sally Bowles has a real prototype. It was Jean Ross, a young British actress and writer who worked as a cabaret singer in Weimar Berlin. After the release of "Cabaret", Jean Ross was very offended that Christopher Isherwood portrayed her as apolitical and anti-Semitic. In fact, she was a member of the British Communist Party and later a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War. People who knew Jean Ross personally described her as "a gentle, educated and very beautiful woman, not at all like the vulgar vampire portrayed by Lisa Minnelli."
It can be assumed that such a "twisted" perception of the female image was a consequence of the sexual orientation of Christopher Isherwood, who practically did not hide his homosexuality, changed many partners in his life, and at the age of 48 fell in love with an 18-year-old artist, with whom he lived for 33 years, until his death from prostate cancer. Or maybe it was due to some circumstances of the relationship between Christopher Isherwood and Jean Ross. This girl became pregnant by the musician of noble origin Goetz von Eyck (after moving to America, he changed his name to Peter van Eyck and became famous as an actor under that name), and when he left Berlin, she decided to have an abortion. But according to the then laws of Germany, this could not be done without the consent of the child's father. And so Isherwood, an openly gay man, had to pass himself off as the child's father.
Be that as it may, Isherwood liked almost everything in the film adaptation of his novel, except for the role of Sally Bowles. He believed that Liza Minnelli was too talented for the role of Sally Bowles, who in his novel was absolutely mediocre and only imagined herself to be a star. In short, according to Isherwood, "was the complete opposite of Judy Garland's daughter." But how much pleasure Liza Minnelli brought to the audience in this role, which, as they say, “woke up famous the next morning after the premiere”!
However, the film "Cabaret" made famous not only Liza Minnelli, but Jean Ross herself. True, literally a year after the premiere of the film, she died. Shortly before her death, she bitterly shared her impressions of meetings with journalists who, according to her, “asked for numerous interviews, saying that they were interested in Berlin in the 1930s, but in fact did not show the slightest interest in either unemployment or to Nazi marches, not to persecution of Jews. They were only interested in how many men I slept with." Yes, journalists are the same at all times and in all countries. With very few exceptions.
Liza Minnelli's role in this film brought not only fame, but also a whole heap, namely - 6, awards. Including the most prestigious American Oscars and Golden Globes, British BAFTA, Italian David di Donatello. The film itself received 39 awards and 17 nominations. Among the awards received, 8 Academy Awards, including Best Director, 3 Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical, 7 British BAFTA awards, including Best Film and Best Director, Danish Bodil Award for Best Non-European film, two Italian David di Donatello awards, including an award for Best Director.
Of the most important nominations - Best Film and Best Director - "Cabaret" lost only two: Oscar for Best Picture and Golden Globe for Best Director. But to whom?! To the film "The Godfather" and, accordingly, its director Francis Ford Coppola. However, it is wrong to say that "Cabaret" lost something to "The Godfather". These film masterpieces shared the most important awards in a "criss-cross" manner.
And such a festival success happened despite the fact that Bob Fosse turned out to be the director of this film, as it were, "Better a small fish than an empty dish". Originally, the producers offered to direct this film to such acclaimed artists as Billy Wilder, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz and Gene Kelly. But they all refused. And Bob Fosse really wanted to make this film. But! Just three years earlier, he directed his first feature film, "Sweet Charity", a remake of Federico Fellini's "Le notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria)". And this film flopped at the box office. And the producers had a serious risk: after all, only for the right to film the musical they paid Kander, Ebb and Masteroff one and a half million dollars. Bob Fosse's only trump card was his fame as an excellent choreographer. And it worked! With a budget of $ 6 million, the film grossed over $ 42 million.
Against the background of such a festival and financial success of the film, its reception by film critics seems rather restrained. The most characteristic is the evaluation of the film by Roger Ebert, who gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4 possible. In his review, he gave a kind of explanation for this "stinginess". At the same time, he draws a parallel between the film "Cabaret" and the film Luchino Visconti "La caduta degli dei (Götterdämmerung, The Damned)", since both pictures describe the same historical period in Germany.
"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. The Nazi gimmicks like boots and leather and muscles and racial superiority and outdoor rallies and Aryan comradeship offered an array of machismo-for-rent that had (and has) a special appeal to some kinds of impotent people."
Despite the pronounced anti-fascist character of the film, in the cinemas of the country most affected by fascism, in the Soviet Union, the film began to be shown only 17 years after its premiere around the world, and then only thanks to perestroika. However, by that time the film could already be viewed on VHS.
One of the first to react to the appearance of the Bob Fosse film "Cabaret" on the Russian screen was the well-known film critic Alexander Fedorov. In his review, he noted:
"Bob Fosse managed in Cabaret what, perhaps, no director could do - organically combine brilliant musical scenes on the screen with episodes of a deep psychological plan, where, as in life, the funny and sad, comical and tragic... The point is in the very atmosphere of the film, the characters of which, trying to stay out of politics, are engaged in sorting out difficult love relationships and, nevertheless, still face fascism in its various guises."
With regard to the audience rating of the film, 65% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave this film an 8-10 rating. Taking this into account and the above, the rating of Bob Fosse's film "Cabaret" according to FilmGourmand was 10.146, which put this film at 35th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
