Screen Queens: Sally Bowles

MattCanada here with another week of homo classics. Since I started writing this weekly column about a month ago, I have focused on films which have not been Oscar contenders and not featured the actresses which Nathaniel, me, and all the readers of this website respect (read: worship in a cult-like fashion). So on to Cabaret!

Liza Minnelli's Oscar winning role as Sally Bowles may well be the gayest Oscar win of all time. Now I am not a big Liza fan, actually I actively dislike her in anything else, but in Cabaret she gives one of the most amazing performances in the history of cinema in the greatest movie musical of all time. Not to be hyperbolic or anything, but Liza's Sally and Cabaret are earth shatteringly good. Liza is hardly the only reason to love Cabaret. You can get almost as much pleasure out of Joel Grey and Marisa Berenson's performances, as well as Michael York's Dietrich-esque bone structure. The Kander and Ebb songs are musical standards by which all other songs should be judged, and Bob Fosse's direction is flawless and endlessly inventive. The costume design, art direction, cinematography and editing are all incredible*. All of this make Cabaret one of those rare films where all of its components brilliantly fit together.

There are two recent Oscar wins that I want to compare to Cabaret and for different reasons. The first is the Best Picture win for Chicago. The film takes so much from Cabaret that it would be inconceivable visually without its superior precedent. The most blatant rip-off (or homage depending on how you see it) is "When You're Good to Mama" complete with the dancing behind the curtains from the end of Sally and The Host's performance of "Money Makes The World Go Round".

"Money Makes the World Good to Mama"

Both films are based on Kander and Ebb musicals, and therefore they have similarities which evince the auteurist credentials of the songwriter and lyricist. To a certain extent the seminal importance of Cabaret makes it unavoidable for Chicago to heavily reference it, but the visual similarities from Marshall's to Fosse's film are there. Chicago's Best Picture win, and its heralding of the return of the musical, can in many ways be seen as a celebration of Cabaret's brilliance.

The second recent Oscar win for which Cabaret provides a useful comparison is Jennifer Hudson's Best Supporting Actress win for Dreamgirls. Liza Minnelli's performance is musically flawless and provides two showstopping moments, the Torch Song "Maybe This Time" and the iconic closer "Cabaret". Jennifer Hudson's performance in Dreamgirls is musically astounding and her rendition of "And I Am Telling You (I Am Not Going)" is the highlight of the film. However, the difference lies in the performances which surround these musical moments. While Liza combines comedy, melodrama, and pathos in the service of conveying the the complex range of human emotions, Hudson can barely deliver her lines in character. Hudson deserved a Grammy, a performance like Liza's deserves the Oscar.

<--- 'beedle dee dee dee dee, Two Ladies': Michael York and Helmut Griem

Cabaret and Liza's Sally have become an ineluctable part of gay culture. Cabaret is the first critical and commercial success to deal with homosexuality in an understanding and mature fashion, making it a part of the texture of the film.

Its importance for the post-Liberation gay community of the Seventies I can only guess, but its continued reverence in gay culture would indicate that it was pretty important. Recently Kristin Chenowith performed "Maybe This Time" on Glee, showing the continued cultural cachet of Cabaret and its appeal to a gay audience (Glee + Chenowith + Cabaret is as camp as it gets).

"Maybe This Time" through the years. With Kristin Chenowith, Liza
Minnelli and Natasha Richardson

While most Oscar wins for Actors playing gay characters are solemn and maudlin enough to make a funeral or Senate Hearing seem enjoyable, Liza brings humour and gravitas to a performance which is a highlight of gay cinema and the pantheon of Best Actress winners.

Lady Lucky: Liza won the competitive Oscar that had always eluded
her legendary mother Judy Garland 'The World's Greatest Entertainer'

*Editors note: Cabaret holds the record of the most awarded movie to have ever lost Best Picture (the 1972 winner was The Godfather) winning an incredible eight Oscars, including three of the big six. Strangely, it was not nominated for costume design. Star Wars and A Place in the Sun are the runners up with six Oscars each.
*

Two Ladies.

Hello, Jose from "Movies Kick Ass" here. On July 31st, 1919 the Weimar Constitution was approved in the German Empire giving path to one of the most complicated eras in European history.

Weimar was a limbo of sorts between both World Wars, time during which Germany sunk in political and economical problems, but flourished culturally; Brecht, UFA, Expressionism and Bauhaus were a few of the things that came out from this period.
But thinking of a perfect way to sum up the entire history of Weimar only two people come to mind: Sally Bowles and Lola Lola.

They are the "heroines" from their respective films. Sally in "Cabaret" and Lola Lola in "The Blue Angel".
They are linked by their profession (cabaret performers/aspiring actresses), their exuberant sex appeal and their love of divine decadence.

But beyond the obvious comparisons (it's obvious that Lola and UFA films inspired Christopher Isherwood who wrote the book "Cabaret" is based upon...) there is something fascinating about how both these women embody Weimar history.
Sally and Lola take special pleasure in luxurious goods. One fur coat in "Cabaret" goes through all the phases of hyperinflation; first it becomes an almost guilt-inducing device of desire and consequentially turns into a life saving object covering her medical expenses.

Then there's the whole issue of how cabarets blossomed amidst the upcoming political chaos brewing with the Nazi party.
Isherwood, who wrote about homosexual experiences from autobiographical facts, came to Berlin because being gay was still illegal in his home country.
Sally in "Cabaret" is involved in a love triangle with two other men who also have feelings for each others.

Sex got so out of control in Weimar that a law was passed forbidding pornography. This whole issue in fact triggers the plot in "The Blue Angel" as a bitter professor (Emil Jannings) visits a cabaret to prevent his students from visiting it.

Sally and Lola became iconic characters for the actresses who portrayed them, but more than that they should be seen as fascinating representations of history through different eyes. Lola was a portrait of her times, Sally is a postmodernist vision.

Interestingly enough the very nature of their professions announces their eventual cinematic relevance; the word "cabaret" comes from the Latin "camera" (which means "small room") which later gave name to the photographic device.
If their whole history is contained in something as elemental as a word, then a line from "The Blue Angel" sums up the way in which the characters' incite public reaction.
"You've got a false conception of your profession" says someone to Lola. He might as well have been talking about the way the modern world has come to perceive Weimar.