Cabaret (1972)

I was putting this one off as long as I could. Not because I didn’t think I’d like it, and not because I didn’t think I’d be interested. Quite the opposite – I already knew about it, thanks to my theater background; I’ve lived here long enough to see Broadway revive of the show three times, and I’ve seen a staging of the play that inspired it. I’ve even hit up the Broadway sing-along piano bar in town and joined in with the crowd in singing some of its soundtrack hits (and bellowing along to “Mein Herr” with a bunch of strangers is as much of a blast as it sounds). But something I’ve noticed as of late is that over time, with each new production, the subtextual warnings about turning a blind eye to fascism have been more and more blatant – and there can only be one reason why. And that’s something that threw me about this film – that subtext is still very faint. Cabaret is based on the work of Christopher Isherwood, an English writer who spent time in Berlin in the 1930s, where he…