TMILN's 100 Favourites - 99

99. Cabaret (1972)
Dir: Bob Fosse
Starring: Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Joel Grey, Helmut Griem, Fritz Wepper

Berlin, 1931: With National Socialism on the rise an English academic starts an unlikely friendship with an American nightclub singer.

Like Holly Golightly, Sally Bowles must be one of Hollywood’s most recognisable female characters. It was the role that suggested that Liza Minnelli could go on to have a career comparable to her late mother Judy Garland. Minnelli won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of the care-free, almost reckless Sally who spends her nights entertaining Berliners at the seedy Kit Kat Club and her performance is excellent, and not only when she’s belting out Kander and Ebb’s numerous show-stopping numbers. Michael York shows himself to be a fine actor as the bi-sexual Brian, surely the best role of his career. In fact neither York nor Minnelli were ever to make a movie to match ‘Cabaret’, but then so few films can touch upon a film so brilliantly atmospheric. This is due in no-small part to Joel Grey’s performance as the Kit Kat Club’s creepy, Nazi-baiting MC, a relatively minor role but one that allows Grey to steal the film from his talented co-stars. However, the real star of the show is the director Bob Fosse. A former Broadway dancer turned choreographer, ‘Cabaret’ is surprisingly light on dancing but the perfectly realised combination of sordid pleasure, hedonism, political unrest and fear shows that Fosse was a great talent in more fields than one.