I watched this for the first time last night and really enjoyed it. I'm not a massive fan of musicals to be honest but technically is Cabaret a musical? All the songs come from a source (they are on stage) and no one bursts into song or does a dance routine when they're not on stage.
shareIt is the #5 on the AFI list of 100 greatest musicals.
shareI was thinking the same thing. :/
As the title says.
It's not a typical "burst into song" on the streets musical (a la West Side Story), but yeah, it definitely showcases a number of great musical pieces.
sharelet's say it is a MATURE person's musical
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No, it's not really a musical. Rather, it's a movie with songs. You wouldn't call Walk the Line or La Vie en Rose musicals even though they feature singing, would you? Same thing here. However, the stage show is a more traditional "book musical," with characters bursting into song to express their thoughts and emotions. These introspective numbers were cut from the movie, obviously.
[b]BTW:{/b] The movie does have one song that isn't sung at the club -- "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," but even then that's an impromptu performance and not a character inconspicuously bursting into song.
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Yes, it's a musical. The fact that all the songs are diegetic (i.e., take place as songs in the narrative world of the film) doesn't make any difference: so do the songs in 42nd Street, but we are clearly meant to enjoy the musical numbers in that movie for their own sake. A large part of the running time (and the budget) is devoted to them. They were all written by the same songwriting team for their spots in the story. (In the case of Cabaret it's a little more complicated, since it's somewhat re-imagined from its stage source, but nevertheless their placement is not arbitrary. This is not Young Man with a Horn, with Doris Day getting up in a nightclub and singing some random songs that Warner Bros. happened to have in the piano bench.) All of these are clues that the movie is meant to be taken and enjoyed as a musical.
"You must sing him your prettiest songs, then perhaps he will want to marry you."
The stage play has songs outside of the Kit Kat Klub, but the film didn't want to alienate the audience, so they cut out all of
those songs.
"I have been felt up, stalked, and called Taylor Swift. Could you please just cut me some slack?!"
Is Spider-Man a comic book action flick?
Could greensville be any dumber?
Why is it when somebody has a really easy question that would take about half of a second to figure out for themselves, instead of being an intelligent person, they go online and ask everyone to figure it out for them?
Bob, I love you.
shareIt's a perfectly valid question! Surely it's what these boards are about? A bit of healthy debate. All the songs in the film are sung on stage or acknowledged by others in the film. This to me was quite interesting as songs in other musicals I've seen have people burst into song with a full unseen, unmentioned orchestra. I wouldn't say Spinal Tap was a musical and that has songs in it.
sharesmug and arrogant reply
share Since a large part of it is made up of musical numbers, even if they are all performed for an audience, it would qualify as a musical. Also, the numbers
reflect the action in the story. A lot of other movies, such as Mother Wore
Tights and Yankee Doodle Dandy, are classified as backstage musicals,
with all their musical numbers confined to stage performances rather than characters breaking out into song at random. A movie such as Papa's Delicate
Condition, on the other hand, is not classified as a musical, despite the
fact that, in the second half of the film, Jackie Gleason's character suddenly
and unexpectedly bursts into song--up until then the movie had been a straight
comedy, and it's a little jarring to have a musical number turn up out of nowhere.
I'm not crying, you fool, I'm laughing!
Hewwo.
Yes and I rewatched this and got why is this a musical.
1. The Emcee isn't necessarily really "singing" in like "Willkommen" but talking in their world, and why on earth would he need to sing... And he doesn't even have many speaking lines through the movie although he appears quite a lot...
2. Songs take place in good places, like "Money" is performed when Max, a rich guy first appears... So, Emcee acts almost like "The Greek Chorus" of this film
As the title says.