Divine decadence darling!

Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome to 101 films podcast 23, in which we dissect the divinely decadent Cabaret. Lewis first watched this film a few months back with the expectation that it would be a fairly average musical in the vein of Chicago, but in fact it turns out to be a brilliant imagining of the rise of Nazism set against the backdrop of the decadence of the Weimar Republic. Who’d have thunk it? Ian was similarly bowled over by the unexpected brilliance of the film, to the point where he makes a rather controversial declaration at the end of the podcast…

Thanks to this film, both of us now suddenly *get* where all the affection for Liza Minelli comes from – she’s simply amazing in this picture, and I’d even go so far to say her screen presence is mesmerizing (an often overused word in film criticism, but decidedly appropriate here). Basically, if you haven’t seen this film, watch it NOW. And don’t worry if you don’t like musicals: the songs are basically there as no more than comments on the rather unconventional love story/political upheaval that concerns the main thrust of the film (but when they do crop up, the cabaret performances are fantastic).

You may have noticed that we’re making a decided effort to keep the podcasts a bit shorter for your listening pleasure – we realised we were getting a bit self-indulgent when it came to the running time, to the point where some of the podcasts were almost as long as the films they were paying homage to. We promise to keep the podcasts down to a more reasonable half an hour (or thereabouts) from now on. Promise. We’re also going to make an effort to write a bit more on these blog posts, so do please keep checking back every Thursday, hopefully there’ll be plenty worth reading.

Oh, and we hope you enjoy the new jingles/stings in this podcast – we love any excuse to do some bad singing.

Without further ado, here’s this week’s feature presentation… Click below:

Or download and listen on your MP3 player of choice:

101 Films Podcast 023 – Cabaret

OR subscribe on iTunes by clicking on the link below:

Lastly, thanks to Andrew for sending in his film recommendation: we’re building up a sizable list of recommendations, but we still need many more to reach the magic 101. Feel free to suggest anything that you think has merit, and don’t be afraid to recommend fairly ‘big’ films too – between us we have a fair few major gaps in our knowledge (I mean, Ian had never seen Top Gun…). Email your recommendations to 101filmsyoushouldhaveseen@gmail.com or just leave a comment on the blog.

Director: Bob Fosse Year of release: 1972 Studio/Distributor: ABC Pictures/Allied Artists Country: USA