Cabaret

Cabaret (1972) is Bob Fosse's musical drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It is 1931, the Kit Kat Club in Berlin, and American singer Sally Bowles performs as if tomorrow may never arrive.

Outside the club doors the Weimar Republic is coming apart: no work, brawls in the streets, and the marching boots of brown-shirted men getting louder. Inside there is greasepaint, feathers, and a leering Master of Ceremonies who introduces each act as though the politics outside simply did not exist. Sally falls into an affair with Brian, an Englishman scraping by on language lessons, while a wealthy German named Max turns both their heads. The brighter the stage gets, the darker the world beyond it, and Fosse lets you feel that gap through the cutting alone, with barely a word spilled.

The picture swept eight Oscars, a rare haul for a film that lost Best Picture to The Godfather: Fosse took the directing prize, while Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey as the emcee both walked away with acting awards. Minnelli does not play a star here so much as live out the fear of ending up a nobody. Best for viewers who want a musical that warns rather than comforts, and who are drawn to how art keeps dancing as catastrophe closes in. Stream Cabaret (1972) online on iFILM.