Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

An American cabaret girl falls in love with a stiff English teacher in the Berlin of the 30s, while the Nazis start to seize power over the country. The musical numbers in the movie are highly enjoyable and filled with great little visual ideas. I enjoyed them thoroughly. The actual love triangle story didn't impress a lot - I couldn't help the feeling that it was slanted too much into giving more contrast to the (prudish) Nazis that show up more and more during the movie. What did stick out for me was the editing. The pacing is what I might call 'standard', but very often there are really fast cutaways. During the stage shows, there are flashes of audience visible, some of them more visually inspired than others. The woman with the monocle, obviously inspired by Dix is quite memorable, but other shots just show generic cabaret guests clapping and laughing. I do wonder how they came up with the decision to edit that way. It could maybe be a 'director'...

An older upper-class man entices his wife's young lover to commit the perfect burglary. You can feel the theatre origin of the script extremely strongly throughout the script, with its crucial break of the first act right in the middle. It is highly interested in form as the second part of the film is basically mirroring the first one but with an unexpected twist. The characters turn out to be much more embittered by their situations than both of them let on. They are rendered as rather caricatured versions of very realistic persons. This over-the-top characters, but played very matter-of-factly by the two actors took me quite some time to get used to. But once suspension of disbelief set in, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. The camera work didn't look great on my screen, the interiors felt very theatrical, with too much pointed light and the exteriors on the other hand looked a little flat. I would have preferred the outside scenes also harsher in lighting, with strong s...