Cabaret

A maddening mixture, this adaptation of John Kander's fine musical based on Christopher Isherwood's Berlin stories. Superbly choreographed by Fosse, the cabaret numbers evoke the Berlin of 1931 - city of gaiety and perversion, of champagne and Nazi propaganda - so vividly that only an idiot could fail to perceive that something is rotten in the state of Weimar. Doubling as director, Fosse unfortunately feels the need to put the boot in with some crude cross-cutting (eg from a man being beaten up by Nazis in the street to the leering faces of the cabaret performers) which lands the film in a queasy morass of overstatement.