If Sally Bowles was around today, she’d most likely be chronically online, binging on TikTok make-up tutorials and dance crazes.She’d be oblivious to the outside world, unaware of the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, or the orange menace that is Trump.
Bob Fosse’s film has endured, because the theme of “divine decadence” amid the encroaching evil of Nazism is a pertinent reminder of the erosion of civil liberties and art as oppositional force of free expression.
The film was beset by problems from the jump: musicals weren’t really cool in the early seventies, the post-hippy era with the rise of civil rights protests and second wave feminism. Who’d go and see a film about queer nightclubs, set against the backdrop of the Third Reich? Fosse’s first film, ‘Sweet Charity’ wasn’t exactly a triumph, either.
Even worse, Fosse was increasingly at loggerheads with his friend and producer Cy Feuer, while lead Liza Minnelli remained unconvinced about the appeal of her co-star Michael York, until rehearsals began in earnest.
Oh, the irony. It was colossal, beloved of audiences and critics alike, winning eight Oscars, only unrivalled by a certain motion picture titled ‘The Godfather’. It’s still running in the West End and Broadway to this day, too.
The screenplay by Jay Presson Allen still fizzes with wit, heart and the chill of right wing politics. It works, precisely because it’s rooted in reality, based on Christopher Isherwood’s beautiful semi-autobiographical novel ‘Goodbye To Berlin’.
It’s all about the outsider’s perspective, gazing at the glittering, sexy floorshow, as the world crumbled around him. Couldn’t ever happen again…could it? Mix me a Prairie Oyster, darling.
Hit The North 