My Year now has two musical films in a row directed by Bob Fosse. Let's compare and contrast Sweet Charity with Cabaret.
Both films feature standout performances by lead women.
Both lead female characters are alone and searching for something.
Charity is looking for a quiet life with a husband and baby.
Sally is looking or the wild life of fame and fortune and avoids getting a husband and baby.
Both leading characters are eternal optimists.
Both feature a chorus line of women from the wrong side of the rail.
Clearly, the Mr. Fosse of Cabaret owes a lot to the Mr. Fosse of Sweet Charity. In Sweet Charity he was trying out various cinematic techniques; with Cabaret, Mr. Fosse has a much stronger sense of his cinematic vision for telling the story. The camera tricks are used much more sparingly and don't get in the way of the story, but help us see it more clearly. In Charity there was an Overture and Intermission, mimicking how people experienced the stage version of musical. With Cabaret, that convention is thrown out.
Fosse's choreography seems to have evolved as well. The isolation moves are still there, but they are much less constraining--perhaps fitting in the looser environment of Weimar Berlin.
The movie loses some of the music of the stage show and really only presents musical numbers that are in the setting of the Cabaret. So Brian and Fritz and Natalia and Fraulein Schneider don't sing. I think this probably heightens the contrast between the cabaret-world and the "real" world of fascism, hate crimes, and violence. However, it prevents us from knowing some of the inner thoughts of the characters, which a good ballad would give us. I've never seen the show on stage, so I don't know for certain what's missing.
Michael York seems the perfect embodiment of Christopher Isherwood, on whose Berlin Stories this stage show and film are based--young, thin, beautiful, blond, with a swoop of blond hair that makes him look like he just left the campus of Eaton.
There is an independent film out right now called Chris and Don: A Love Story, that is about Isherwood in Hollywood. Perhaps it will soon add some insight to my musical thinking.
Cabaret
Music by John Kander
Lyrics by Fred Ebb
Book by Joel Masteroff
Screenplay by Jay Presson Allen
(a woman, who is also the playwright of Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Tru)
Directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse
Cast: Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Joel Grey, Fritz Wepper, Helmut Griem, Marisa Berenson.
Both films feature standout performances by lead women.
Both lead female characters are alone and searching for something.
Charity is looking for a quiet life with a husband and baby.
Sally is looking or the wild life of fame and fortune and avoids getting a husband and baby.
Both leading characters are eternal optimists.
Both feature a chorus line of women from the wrong side of the rail.
Clearly, the Mr. Fosse of Cabaret owes a lot to the Mr. Fosse of Sweet Charity. In Sweet Charity he was trying out various cinematic techniques; with Cabaret, Mr. Fosse has a much stronger sense of his cinematic vision for telling the story. The camera tricks are used much more sparingly and don't get in the way of the story, but help us see it more clearly. In Charity there was an Overture and Intermission, mimicking how people experienced the stage version of musical. With Cabaret, that convention is thrown out.
Fosse's choreography seems to have evolved as well. The isolation moves are still there, but they are much less constraining--perhaps fitting in the looser environment of Weimar Berlin.
The movie loses some of the music of the stage show and really only presents musical numbers that are in the setting of the Cabaret. So Brian and Fritz and Natalia and Fraulein Schneider don't sing. I think this probably heightens the contrast between the cabaret-world and the "real" world of fascism, hate crimes, and violence. However, it prevents us from knowing some of the inner thoughts of the characters, which a good ballad would give us. I've never seen the show on stage, so I don't know for certain what's missing.
Michael York seems the perfect embodiment of Christopher Isherwood, on whose Berlin Stories this stage show and film are based--young, thin, beautiful, blond, with a swoop of blond hair that makes him look like he just left the campus of Eaton.
There is an independent film out right now called Chris and Don: A Love Story, that is about Isherwood in Hollywood. Perhaps it will soon add some insight to my musical thinking.
Cabaret
Music by John Kander
Lyrics by Fred Ebb
Book by Joel Masteroff
Screenplay by Jay Presson Allen
(a woman, who is also the playwright of Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Tru)
Directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse
Cast: Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Joel Grey, Fritz Wepper, Helmut Griem, Marisa Berenson.
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