Rhapsodies

“Leave your troubles outside,
So- life is disappointing? Forget it!
We have no troubles here! Here life is beautiful… The girls are beautiful… Even the orchestra, is beautiful.”

For the fifth day of my film sketch challenge I drew Bob Fosse‘s  Cabaret.

I’m a huge fan of Bob Fosse’s work and since most of that was theater it is always a regret that it is impossible to see more. Caberet is easily one of his best and certainly one of his darkest and most depressing.

It was kind of hard to decide what to think Cabaret is about, visually I mean. Joke’s about  Liza Minnelli aside, her performance as Sally Bowles is one of the best character portraits in film simultaneously sexy, fun loving, broken and pathetic It would be very easy to coast on just drawing a pin up of the Mein Herr number.

Ultimately I think Cabaret is about the disintegration of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazi Regime with the Kit Kat Club as the last place to go to deny this terrible reality for one more minute before the curtain comes down.
Joel Grey as your host to this happy state of denial is brilliant. Grinning and amoral he comments on these states of affairs on stage through song. Off stage he is mysterious and silent almost acting as Sally’s conscious as he seemingly exists in her peripheral vision quietly mocking her.