1931. Berlin. Brian Roberts (Michael York), a handsome, bisexual Oxbridge doctoral student, visits the Fatherland at the height of post-World War I depression, ostensibly to finish his dissertation. At a boarding house he meets Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), a starry-eyed and sexually promiscuous American cabaret singer, who introduces him to the Kit Kat Club and its Master of Ceremonies (Joel Grey).

To make ends meet Brian tutors Fritz Wendel (Fritz Wepper), a closeted Jew with industrial ambitions, and the beautiful Natalia Landauer (Marisa Berenson), the Jewish daughter of a rich Berlin businessman. Discovering himself smitten, Fritz enlists Brian and Sally in his scheme to woo Natalia believing them a couple.

Into the Kit Kat Club comes Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem), a wealthy playboy with strong political and show business connections. He captivates Sally with his illusion of devotion and attracts Brian with his generosity and charm. They form a quick trio, begin traveling together and find themselves inextricably linked in a love triangle from which Maximilian finally pulls out by taking leave of the country.

Sally learns she's pregnant, possibly with Maximilian's child, though she can't truly be sure when given her casual habits. Brian offers to marry her and their relationship takes on an idyllic glow in preparation for pending nuptials and relocation to England. Fritz embraces his Jewishness, marries Natalia and becomes heir apparent to her family business, although it's apparent there's a Nazi revolution afoot.

Sally ends up selling the fur coat Maximilian her to pay for an abortion. Brian takes her actions as an affront to his honorable intentions and she confronts him with the reality of their situation. Namely, their coupling simply won't work because Brian's a loyal, but mildly confused, scholar with aspirations of teaching at a stuffy college in the quiet and obscurity of the English countryside. Opposite his provincial outlook, Sally is desperately caught up in the false glamour of Berlin's cabaret scene with its sensual escape from the material and spiritual vacuum slowly enveloping central Europe in the plume of Hitler's Third Reich.

Of course the film's frequent song and dance numbers everywhere accent the movie's tone of social commentary constructed as historical allegory. Likewise Cabaret's production design fills out the frame with a lush, carefully detailed vision of pre-War Berlin complete with brown-coated Nazi's, period cars and costume, and an impressive cast of performers hired according to national type. Thus, German Jews seemingly play German Jews. The American plays an American. The Brit plays a Brit and so on making the film's overall effect one of careful artifice manipulated through the vivid visual style of director Bob Fosse's camerawork and framing. That is, Brian and Sally's world becomes the material representation of Cabaret's theme about the dangers of superficial appeals and entertainment covering over simmering social problems and basic human cruelty.

But the movie is also a presentation of escape, especially in the MC's numbers, sometimes commenting very directly on the Nazi state, sometimes not at all. "Willkommen" opens the production and its combination of buoyancy and darkness continues through such memorable numbers as "Mein Heir", "Money, Money", "Cabaret" and "If You Could See Her", attaining an unexpected turning point of deeply disturbing pathos with "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" sung by the Nazi youth at a picnic pastoral in the middle of the film.

Throughout the MC's white-faced makeup with red blush circles and broad eye and lip details turns him into an asexual figure, both set apart from the action at hand and simultaneously suited to uniquely mirror all comings and goings. Grey's performance is indeed one of the film's strong suits. So is York's sympathetic and entirely fragile Brian. The problem arrives when considering Minnelli's version of Sally Bowles and the consideration of whether or not the movie tells her story or uses her as one of the grotesques peopling its hyperbolized Berlin of 1931.

For my money, and keep in mind I've never been a Minnelli fan, Sally is but a foil for Brian's journey through the heart of coming evil. Not to take the World War II symbols too far, but Brian's British citizenship makes him the most prominent national antagonist to Hitler's coming war machine, even if that war machine's greatest crimes were perpetrated against European Jewry easily presented by the likes of Fritz and Natalia. Plus York's urbane performance coupled with his naivety about the cabaret make him an ideal protagonist upon whose shoulders sits our comprehension of the film as both our surrogate and our frame of reference.

Because York is so good, and because Minnelli is so perfectly adequate though not extraordinary in her vision of excess riding on the coattails of destruction, Cabaret has a telling problem in its center. Written by Jay Presson Allen from the Joe Masteroff musical, in turn inspired both by John Van Druten's play "I Am a Camera" and Christopher Isherwood's book Berlin Stories, it requires a brilliant central female performance. Instead it enjoys the richness of York's often underutilized skill, the highest achievement of Grey's career and, for me at least, an often under whelming turn in what is considered by many to be Minnelli's signature role.

I'll grant she has many natural talents and a tremendous voice. I'll even throw in the expressiveness of her eyes. But for some reason I remain troubled by her physical person in the way she seemingly inherited the least characteristics of her two show business parents, Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli respectively, while holding on to a dippy self-centeredness that now seems anything but an intentional piece of performance or a genuine affectation. In short, sweet Liza is fine but no better than that and her contribution to Cabaret is one of two limitations keeping the film from being a true classic of cinema despite its inclusion in the National Film Registry.

The other problem is its generic focus that's unavoidably predetermined by the libretto. With song and dance numbers uniquely suited to the career, style and interest of Fosse whose voluminous talents in virtually every performance-based media are something to behold, such song and dance numbers threaten the serio-historic points developed in the film. It's as if being so good at choreographing, recording and editing musical sequences means their impact is often much sharper than the framing drama with its nuts and bolts plot and a few underlying themes.

Naturally it's arguable this is precisely the point. Yet I'm resistant to Cabaret's charms in much the same way I dismiss outright the value of self-consciously produced epic movies as so much bluster and expense produced to replace the fundamental values of good storytelling and strong characterization. Though Cabaret may not be guilty of these excesses, its organization as a screen musical occasionally limits its impact even when its allegories, historical analyses and dark commentary are advanced as plainly as the breaking sun.

Still, it grossed some $42 million at the box office with rentals of some $20 million in the United States alone thereby making it a commercial success in the turning point year of The Godfather. Plus it should be remembered for its remarkable run at the year-end awards where it cleaned up eight of 10 Oscars, including best director and actress, and three of eight Golden Globes, including best musical or comedy, to very nearly make the Corleone saga a footnote of '70s auteurism.

Fosse should himself be given his adequate due as one of the few people to ever win a Tony, Oscar and Emmy, although he won all three in the same year. Simply put, he's the man who rightfully wrested the mantel of brilliance from Francis Ford Coppola's brow before the eventual expression of such works as The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. For this forum, at least, this signal accomplishment is enough even if it weren't magnified by a specific and provocative cinematic vision that involves a reliance on physical performance, a tendency towards sexual ambiguity and certain modernist tendencies that challenge the coherence and linear qualities of well-made stories.