Must-watchInterwar · Film · 1972
Cabaret
In Berlin in 1931, a reserved English student falls for Sally Bowles, the dazzling star of the Kit Kat Klub, while outside the club the Nazis grow bolder every night.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 1 places.
Stop 1: Nollendorfplatz, Schöneberg, Berlin
Key location
Brian moves into Sally's boarding house and is swept into her nights at the Kit Kat Klub, where the master of ceremonies mocks everything, including the Nazis.
What really happened
Cabaret is set in the last years of the Weimar Republic, when the Great Depression left about six million Germans unemployed and street fights between Nazi stormtroopers and Communists became routine. The Nazi vote rose from 18 percent in September 1930 to 37 percent in July 1932, and Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933.
The film comes from Christopher Isherwood's Berlin stories, drawn from his life in the city between 1929 and 1933, and from the 1966 stage musical. Sally Bowles was based on the singer Jean Ross; Isherwood himself was gay, a side of Brian that the film only partly acknowledges. The Kit Kat Klub is invented, and Fosse uses its numbers as a mirror of the politics outside.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Cabaret
- Directed by
- Bob Fosse
- Countries
- United States
- Languages
- English, German
- Released
- 1972
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Politics
- Romance
