The Bread Is Stale and the Circus Is Old; the Performance Isn't What It Once Was
Dissecting Cabaret (1972: Starring Liza Minnelli) and Political Discourse
This essay honestly just started out with me wanting to watch Cabaret. I knew the very bare bones of the story when I was going into it. The main thing I would suggest for your first watch through or your next rewatch is to try to remain critically thinking throughout all of it. The whole point is that Nazism is developing all around but if you focus too closely on the singer without recognizing character flaws or the current times (current as in the times they are in not our existence currently as it stands) surrounding the individuals you can miss a lot. This is made abundantly clear through the film punctuated by the closing line where the Emcee says to the crowd how he’d told them they’d forget all their troubles because “in here, life is beautiful.” This sums up the premise and purpose of the film.
Into the next part I just took some notes while I was watching (the 1972 version starring Liza Minnelli for reference) that I’d like to share. The very first thing I noted (not immediately addressed in the film but correlated to its origin and meaning) was that this musical was developed as commentary on the ignorance and choices in distraction from pressing matters. During the mud wrestling scene when Brian gets up after his prospect says business is terrible due to communists and Nazis as he looks around at everyone laughing you get this sense of dread or disgust at the ignorance surrounding the state of the world. Berlin used to have a strong Queer community so the trans or cross-dressing person in the bathroom fits in that is to anyone except someone looking from the outside (or those who are feigning ignorance to plot outside of view). This scene is also the first moment where we clearly realize that the English teacher, Brian, likes men or at the very least has more than a basic curiosity in the other persons genitals.
Next, I wrote that Sally “manic pixie dream girl’ed” him. For those lacking the chronically online persona needed in understanding this or for those simply more reserved I will explain. In writing or film, a manic pixie dream girl is a character usually a younger woman with an eccentric personality typically serving as the romantic interest for a male protagonist and not usually developed upon as an actual person. Now, where this diverges is that online it’s commonly used to refer to a young woman typically one suffering from some type of mental illness (most often I’ve seen it in reference to a woman with autism/ADHD/AuDHD) with an eccentric personality being fantasized or romanticized for the purposes of male development or otherwise mutually assured destruction. Still typically avoiding the markings of actual personhood; their character flaws deemed quirky and brushed aside for what sexual gratification they can provide or how secure in your manhood they can make you feel. Being a person no longer matters at this stage of commodification, and I think that plays a crucial role in understanding Sally’s later choices in the film.
The next note I make is one of the lyrics from Money Song “See how love flies out the door…” and “Money makes the world…Go around (Kander & Ebb, 1972).” This song develops a lot of interesting commentary, but the main thing it flows into in this film is how unabashedly the main characters we follow (Sally and Brian) ignore murder. As long as there are comforts that money can buy, there will be people that will drown themselves in those comforts. Furthermore, the young boy who was singing— a nazi— “tomorrow belongs to me” develops an ominous sense. The older man who seemed not willing and not wanting to stand up adds something. “You still think you can control them?” in response to earlier comment that the Nazis would handle the communists and then they’d handle the Nazis…you cannot tolerate intolerance.
“Don’t you see what is happening in Germany today?” Oh my…?? She loves him but she cannot marry him and it’s one of the most sickening and heart wrenching pieces driving the plot. While everyone else is at the Cabaret Nazis come and kill the Jewish woman’s dog and paint her doorstep to let everyone know she’s Jewish. The distinct action of placing the frames side by side to show the ignorance and what pulls the attention is spectacular in the most haunting way. Furthermore, in other adaptations it is the Nazis direct violence that stops the pair from marrying. This isn’t completely different from how the man hides his Jewish descent for fear of violence but reveals it for the woman’s hand in marriage but it is a distinct change that I find curiously worth noting. We do not see what happens to the pair, and the film leaves this open deliberately; you can always imagine worse things for yourself when left with an ambiguous ending. The swastika posters along the walking way as Sally is talking about her love affairs and needing an abortion that you’d easily ignore if you were focused on the plot, firsthand is an interesting note.
If you could see her through my eyes the host of the Cabaret sings: dancing with a person in an ape costume, “she wouldn’t look Jewish at all.” Is the host picking fun at the surrounding propaganda? “Is it a crime to fall in love?” The crowd laughs and claps…not acknowledging that half of the people in there would face the same treatment given the circumstances. The cabaret constantly makes a spectacle of things the Nazis would destroy. When we see the Nazis sitting in the crowd at the end it feels as though there is no space for nuance. The Nazis likely see it as picking fun at the people they hate or have been taught to hate and do not see the irony at all (if they did, they’d beat and kill the performers too). It also seems as though there is a prevailing sense of dread overhead because these performers must know that their time is coming. Nazis don’t just hate the Jews they hate many different groups of people— but at the same time it is entirely possible people were willfully ignoring it because they hoped it’d just go away.
The writing “first they came for…and I did not speak up because I wasn’t…then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up (Niemöller, 1946)” is important to understanding this film on a deeper level. It’s even more concerning that in recent times people have begun to laugh at the antisemitic jab at the end of “If You Could See Her.” Adam Lambert, during a performance in 2025, handled this case well reprimanding audience members saying “No. This is not comedy. Pay attention.” Some commentors from the audience later stated it was horrific to watch as people begun to laugh (Siegler, 2025). The recent rise in antisemitism makes this an ever more pressing matter. Many people are forgetting to differentiate between a country and a people— yet unsurprisingly the current conflict in Palestine has in many ways contributed to the uprise in antisemitism. The stereotypes labeling Jews as completely other and at the same time all-powerful have contributed to the dissolvement of the distinction between the opposition to Israel/a flawed government body and the hatred of all Jews (Altman, 2024). Essentially, people can choose to hate everyone involved and become more separate over time if they see them as different, worse, and the root of all their issues. If they look at the people around them as the reason for life being difficult, they stop looking at the people determining those things.
Some of my last notes include when Sally says “we must be lucky” because the baby means her being a prostitute and him being queer are no longer visible issues when they’re together due to it, but Brian seems lost in thought. Then she got rid of it. They eventually concluded and accepted that this baby would not provide them with the life they want to live and that they’d end up miserable stuck together through obligation and appearances if they kept it. The reason being that Sally likes being a part of the cabaret. It even seems that Sally wants to drink herself to death or essentially overindulge until she passes based on the closing song Cabaret. Brian understood what was beginning to develop and got himself out of Germany, but Sally chose to escape in a different way. The very last bit of the film is where the Emcee reminds the audience that they’d forgotten their troubles as he’d said they would because everything is beautiful at the cabaret. It is at this final moment that we see how many of the audience members are Nazis when originally, they’d been thrown out. People come here to escape in many ways, but the unfortunate thing is that they will all lose some bit of themselves in the end.
References:
Akbar, A. (2021, December 13). Cabaret review – Eddie Redmayne is electric in this blinder of a show. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/dec/13/cabaret-review-eddie-redmayne-playhouse-theatre
Altman, D. (2024, September 24). The “new” antisemitism conflates criticism of Israel with prejudice against Jews. But it’s complicated. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-new-antisemitism-conflates-criticism-of-israel-with-prejudice-against-jews-but-its-complicated-234582
Broadway Ben. (2025, January 18). The Evolution of Cabaret’s Make-Up Design (Emcee Edition). Youtube.com.
Fosse, B. (1972). Cabaret. Tubitv.com. https://tubitv.com/movies/100021494/cabaret. Watch “Cabaret” (1972) Starring Liza Minnelli for free with ads on Tubi.
Gloria Vázquez Rodríguez, L. (2017). (500) Days of Postfeminism: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Stereotype in its Contexts. Academia.edu; Prisma Social. https://www.academia.edu/44710710/_500_Days_of_Postfeminism_A_Multidisciplinary_Analysis_of_the_Manic_Pixie_Dream_Girl_Stereotype_in_its_Contexts
Kander, J., & Ebb, F. (1972). Money Song Lyrics — Cabaret Musical. Allmusicals.com. https://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/cabaret/moneysong.htm
Siegler, M. (2025, February 3). Adam Lambert reprimands audience member for laughing at antisemitic line in “Cabaret.” Yahoo Entertainment. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/adam-lambert-reprimands-audience-member-170756996.html
Sottosanti, K. (2024, March 13). Cabaret | Broadway Production, Cast, Plot, Awards, & Facts | Britannica. Www.britannica.com. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cabaret-musical-by-Kander-and-Ebb
Wikipedia Contributors. (2019, December 17). Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Pixie_Dream_Girl
Wikipedia Contributors. (2020, April 5). Cabaret (1972 film). Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabaret_(1972_film)