Subtitles:

English (SDH), French, Spanish, none

Extras:

• Commentary by Stephen Tropiano
• Cabaret: The Musical That Changed Musicals New Featurette! (28:40)
• Cabaret: A Legend in the Making (17:31)
• The Recreation of an Era (6:04)

Behind the Scenes - Kit Kat Memory Gallery

Cabaret, Bob Fosse’s ground-breaking Oscar®-winning musical drama starring Liza Minnelli (Arthur, The Sterile Cuckoo), Michael York (the Austin Powers films), Joel Grey (Man on a Swing), Helmut Griem, and Marisa Berenson (I am Love), celebrates its 40th anniversary with a Blu-ray debut on February 5, 2013. Remastered for the first time in over 20 years, Cabaret is presented in its original aspect ratio (16 x 9 format). Winner of eight Academy Awards®, including Director (Fosse), Actress (Minnelli), and Supporting Actor (Grey), the film will be offered in a premium Blu-ray Book format, which contains 40 pages of insightful photos and text. A new documentary, "Cabaret: The Musical That Changed Musicals" will be featured, along with vintage documentaries "Cabaret: A Legend in the Making," "The Recreation of an Era," a multi-part memory gallery and more.

Cabaret was adapted from the Tony® - winning stage production, which was in turn inspired by Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and the play and movie I Am a Camera. This remarkable musical turns the pre-war Berlin of 1931 into a sexually charged center of decadence. Liza Minnelli gives a bravura performance as nightclub entertainer Sally Bowles, and Joel Grey is the master of ceremonies at the nightclub, also acting as the storyteller for the audience, exposing the seediness of the cabaret world. The superb songwriting team of Kander and Ebb contributes a string of memorable songs that not only entertain but also provide social commentary on the events of the time. Under the helm of director-choreographer Bob Fosse (All that Jazz), Cabaret becomes both a devastating drama and top-rate entertainment, and the result is one of the most memorable and meaningful screen musicals ever made.

Originally a 1966 Broadway musical, this groundbreaking Bob Fosse musical was in turn based on Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin, previously dramatized for stage and screen as I Am a Camera with Julie Harris as Sally Bowles. Fosse uses the decadent and vulgar cabaret as a mirror image of German society sliding toward the Nazis, and this intertwining of entertainment with social history marked a new step forward for the movie musical. Michael York plays a British writer who comes to Berlin in the early 1930s in hopes of becoming a teacher. He makes the acquaintance of flamboyant American entertainer Sally Bowles, played by Liza Minnelli. Sally works at the Kit Kat Klub, a George Grosz-like Berlin cabaret where each night the smirking, androgynous Master of Ceremonies (Joel Grey) introduces a jazz-driven "girlie show" to his debauched audience. Virtually all the film's musical numbers are staged within the confines of the Kit Kat Klub, and each song comments on the plot and on Germany's "progression" from hedonism to Hitlerism. Most of the Broadway score by John Kander and Fred Ebb was retained, with the welcome addition of "The Money Song." Although it lost Best Picture to The Godfather, Cabaret won eight Oscars, including awards to Minnelli, Grey, and Fosse. A heavily expurgated 88-minute version of Cabaret has been prepared for commercial TV presentations, regarded by many as dramatically inferior to the full cut.

Gary Tooze

January 24th, 2013