regular late night internet crawling behavior led me to the 1972 musical movie cabaret, starring the extremely talented liza minnelli and joel grey. the film was nominated for 10 oscars and won 8 of them when competing against godfather.
i was positively blown away. i have seen and liked minnelli in arrested development, but had not the faintest idea what was coming at me when i loaded the title clip and the money clip. the cabaret scenes look like a moving matisse(probably in keeping with the early 1930's berlin setting of the film). they are filled with quick swirls of contrasting bright and intense colors, gold, navy, maroon, royal purple, red, orange...the lighting is as deliciously rich as the costumes. the exaggerated makeup echoes the bold, loose, expressive and almost intentionally ugly dance moves. it's amazing how everything still manages to work precisely in concert with each other and make a lot of sense.
minnelli is a natural performer, of course. besides her unforgettable, startling large eyes, it is incredible how freely she moves her body parts. most of the time she's just walking about the stage in ostentatiously large strides, her arms flailing about carelessly. and she sort of just becomes a channel for the enormous amount of life squirting out of her, and there seems to be not the least bit of self-awareness.
i haven't even seen the whole movie, but just the couple stage clips i can watch on youtube entertained me like nothing else i've seen in a long time.
