‘Still think you can control them?” Dizzied by their divinely decadent menage à trois in Weimar Berlin, cabaret singer Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), shy scholar Brian Roberts (Michael York) and suave aristocrat Baron von Heune (Helmut Griem) linger in a beer garden to watch a creepy blond boy singing Tomorrow Belongs to Me with the entire crowd ecstatically joining in – a satanically catchy and authentic-sounding Nazi marching song, brilliantly pastiched by Cabaret’s writer and composer, John Kander and Fred Ebb. (Brian’s question is famously addressed to the Baron, who had airily claimed the Nazis could be controlled after they had done the dirty work of crushing the communists.) It is a sensational moment in this addictive movie, based on the stage show Cabaret and Christopher Isherwood’s original stories about prewar Berlin, uniquely choreographed and directed by Bob Fosse and rereleased now for its 50th anniversary.
Maybe its views on gender fluidity and consent are confrontationally tactless in 2022 compared with 1972 or 1931. But its view of fascism is still very relevant: extremism and racism are enabled by cynicism, irony and exhaustion. This time around, I couldn’t watch Joel Grey’s death’s-head grin as the MC presiding over the raucous Kit Kat Club without thinking of smirking Elon Musk in charge of the unending Twitter quarrelfest.
