Queer Classics: CABARET (1972)

QUEER CLASSICS is back from summer break and school is in session! Because the times they are a changin’ back, and the time has come again to teach the children (young and old).

We FINALLY have Liza represented in the series, in her Oscar-winning role from 1972!

CABARET won a lot of Oscars that year actually, for a macabre musical film that casually and openly depicts queer sexuality, drag, and trans people. And it beat heterosexual icon The Godfather for most of the major awards, a velvet mafia success story if ever I heard one.

For those of us with more trips around the sun under our belts, we remember there once was a time when knowing the work of Liza (with a Z) was a more widespread part of the common language in the gay scene.

If you are a young gay who wonders why Liza Minnelli is a big deal, or who Bob Fosse is; this is the movie that answers those questions. She becomes an icon before your very eyes as you watch the film, proving both that she inherited the best her mother Judy Garland gave her, and that she is a superstar in her own right. And Fosse flaunts his instantly recognizable choreographic dance style to his direction in all its glory here as well. Nobody ever filmed dance in cinema the way he did, because dance flowed in his veins.

For everyone, the film will be a revelation in these modern times where everything old now seems disturbingly new again. Especially how much we need entertainment (and safe spaces to enjoy it) to survive, and how much we still need to learn from the stories it tells.

CABARET questions everything from the limits and the power of love and pleasure as the world crumbles around you, to the need for (and the deconstruction of) the musical as a genre. And somehow it does it all with a brilliant score that reminds you joy is important while warning you of the dangers of distraction.

Come to the CABARET, and let’s luxuriate in some of the best song and dance ever to grace the movie screen, ON the movie screen where you should always be watching the #QUEERCLASSICS