Cabaret (Open Spoilers inside!)

[jayjay]

I just saw this film for the first time this weekend (though I’ve been familiar with the music and general story for a fairly long time), and thought it might be a good time to start a discussion thread on it, given that the last one we had that focused on Cabaret exclusively was over a year ago. There will be open spoilers here, because I’m not going to bend myself in knots to spoiler box a thread about a 34-year-old movie.

I have two questions about the film, one directly about Fosse’s intentions and one about something apparently unconnected.

First, was Sally’s montage just before the scene where she returns to the boarding house after she aborts the baby meant to suggest that a) the emcee could have been the father and b) that was why she aborted it (that it wasn’t either Brian’s or Max’s) and didn’t want to tell Brian why?

Second, for anyone who’s read Gregory Maguire’s original novel of Wicked, do you think Maguire was inspired by the Emcee in creating Mother Yackel, the mysterious woman who seems to shadow Elphaba throughout her life? The Emcee’s surreality and ubiquity in totally irrelevant places (like the biergarten) just triggered that memory…

[Otto]

@jayjay

First, was Sally’s montage just before the scene where she returns to the boarding house after she aborts the baby meant to suggest that a) the emcee could have been the father and b) that was why she aborted it (that it wasn’t either Brian’s or Max’s) and didn’t want to tell Brian why?

I don’t think so. Regardless of who the bio-father was, Sally planned on raising it with Brian. But, after finding out that Brian was sleeping with Max, Sally decided that she could never trust him not to step out on her with other men. And she also decided she wasn’t ready to settle down with him and be a faculty wife, but she left out the “you’re gonna screw other men” part out of her speech.

The MC is fundamentally an asexual character.

[betenoir]

@Otto

The MC is fundamentally an asexual character.

:dubious: I always saw him as a fundamentally pansexual character (up to and including gorrilas). Although I agree with the rest of your take.

[Otto]

I don’t think the MC has any sexuality except what gets projected onto him.

[bienville]

@betenoir

I always saw him as a fundamentally pansexual character (up to and including gorrilas).

My take on it as well.

Anyone know why such major differences between the stage musical and the film?
Switching up which charater is British and which character is American isn’t too big a deal, and the explanation lies, I’m sure, entirely in the casting. Omitting secondary characters and plotlines when adapting for film is pretty common, but in the case of Cabaret the omitted characters and plots were replaced by new alternate characters with their own plotlines- that’s what’s unusual.

I know nothing of Christopher Isherwood’s original novel. Were the “new” characters in the movie present in the book then omitted for the stage musical, while the other characters were kept from the book for the stage musical, then omitted for the movie?

@Otto

I don’t think the MC has any sexuality except what gets projected onto him.

My disagreement with you may have something to do with my having seen Alan Cumming as the MC on Broadway. Had I been sitting in the front row, he very well may have had some sexuality projected onto him.

[Otto]

@bienville

I know nothing of Christopher Isherwood’s original novel. Were the “new” characters in the movie present in the book then omitted for the stage musical, while the other characters were kept from the book for the stage musical, then omitted for the movie?

Oh lord, now I’m gonna have to re-read the Berlin Stories…

@bienville

My disagreement with you may have something to do with my having seen Alan Cumming as the MC on Broadway. Had I been sitting in the front row, he very well may have had some sexuality projected onto him.

I was speaking only of the MC as portrayed by Joel Grey in the film. Didn’t see him or Alan Cumming on-stage. I did see the tour of the last production but I can’t remember much about it, other than that one of the women in the “Two Ladies” number was played by a man and it didn’t work for me.