BUT SINCE, by its own self-admission. Cabaret "is more than a musical," consideration must be paid to the themes the film develops, matters in which the movie is not at all convincing. Going from Isherwood's first-person narration to the camera's more omniscient eye. Cabaret promises to give us a more complete, balanced view of its characters. By restricting its musical numbers to the cabaret setting, it clears the board for increased attention to the relatively straightforward plot that occurs in between the songs. As a result, one ends up demanding more of an intellectual hard-headedness from the movie than it is prepared to offer.
On stage, Cabaret seemed such a seemless musical web that you didn't stop to sort out the explanations it threw at you so self-confidently; its intelligence was one of style and atmosphere rather than of intellectual argument. On film, the vision is more focused, less intimidating and also less impressive. For example, the film has traded in the subplot of the German landlady for a far less interesting romance between a Jewish girl, daughter of a Berlin department store owner, and her would-be suitor. The affair is as boring as it is trite, and, if it weren't for the audience's guilt-ridden apprehensions. I don't think they'd give it a second look. Screenwriter Jay Allen shamelessly uses the threat of the concentration camp--there is an occasional shock cut to street violence and we also see the girl's pet dog beaten by Nazi toughs--to force us to pay attention to the doomed relationship. But he fails to follow his material through to its logical conclusions, allowing the subplot to be resolved in a sentimental wedding sequence that betrays no consciousness of the lovers' more probable fate.
CABARET excepts its audience to have such stock responses to decadence and Nazism that it never really bothers to pin down the exact relationship between the two. At moments, it suggests that a general disgust with the moral latitude of thirties Germany drove the middle classes into Hitler's protective arms. Elsewhere, it would appear that the vicarious thrills provided by the cabaret entertainments were identical to the satisfaction some Germans took in the brutal performances of the Nazis. And there is also the intimation that the cabaret was merely the soporific decoy that permitted the Third Reich to rise unnoticed. On these matters, Fosse's editing serves only to confuse issues without ever bothering to define them.
Curiously, the only villain of the piece is a handsome, young Baron (Helmut Griem) who sets out to seduce both Sally and Brain with the aid of caviar, fur coats and gold cigarette cases. The source of the Baron's corrupting influence is his money and not his sexual tastes. But the audience soon forgets that fact, as the Baron's pursuit of Brain--and not the seductiveness of his wealth--becomes the movie's one fate markedly worse than death. Again, no effort is made to pinpoint the suggested relationship between the discrete deviance presented in the film and the power of the Nazi appeal.
While, pretending to take an enlightened and understanding approach to its material (for Brian turns out to be every bit as bi as the Baron), Cabaret ends up a straight-laced condemnation of sexuality at large. It is no coincidence that the few bisexual characters who have appeared in recent movies have all been presented as evil. Michael York in Something for Everyone and Terence Stamp in Feorema and Entertaining Mr. Sloan victimize the families they visit with their domineering sexual attractiveness, while Murray Head's characterization in Sunday Bloody Sunday is that of a callous and irresponsible drifter. Where movies have never experienced many qualms in dismissing homosexuality by equating it with impotency (except, of course, when a child entered the room--for only then did the homosexual become a clear and present danger), when dealing with bisexuality, they retreat in fear. Since sex in the movies has most often been presented as nothing more than a contest between the strong and the weak, the bisexual, double-sexed as he is assumed to be, is especially dangerous; he is thought to be driven by unquenchable passions and all are expected to keep out of his sight lest they should submit to his power. Cabaret only confirms such a stereotype--throwing in parallel suggestions of political corruption for damning good measure.
The matter is of some importance because if audiences are going to view a film like Cabaret as a moral for our times the forces of sexual liberation might just be defeated before they've even begun their fight. It's not just the folks in Kansas who are shocked and confused by the current goings-on. A few months ago, as supposedly hip a publication as Rolling Stone took time, in an article on the Cockettes, to review San Francisco's sexual underground, concluding. "We are seeing the beginning of the 21st century here, and it feels like sitting ground zero during an explosion of sexuality and hedonism and dope and sensation-seeking unparalleled in American history. "Their tone was one more of condemnation than of delight.
Admittedly, the onward march of sexual liberation can be expected to leave behind a good many bizarre scouting parties in its wake. But it's still too early to issue apocalyptic judgments, even if they come in as attractive and stylish a package as Cabaret's "historically-grounded" warnings. There is no simple connection between sexual experimentation and political dictatorship--and out own present crises can't be so blithely associated with crises of the past. Cabaret is fine when it sticks to what it knows best--its song and dance--but when it ventures into sexual politics it must surrender its claim on out attention. Sally and her friends aren't to be condemned that easily--for Sally, at least, would never forgive us.