Tag: Liza Minnelli

Liza with a Z (1972, Bob Fosse)

“Liza with a Z” closes with a Cabaret medley, including Liza Minnelli playing the Emcee for a couple songs. She starts in the audience, a la the “Cabaret” Broadway revival (only twenty-six years before), and quickly works her way onto the stage, joined by dancers, and does a whirlwind ten-minute set. The opening titles tell us “Z” is a “concert for television,” and it’s fascinating to watch how Fosse presents that concert.

“Z” is a spotlight for Minnelli as a singer, dancer, actor, and personality. The special’s title comes from Say Liza (Liza with a “Z”), a half colloquial memoir song where Minnelli describes her frustration at people calling her “Lisa.” It’s a hilarious, personable number and showcases Minnelli’s ability to toggle between tones. She can go from soulful to goofy to sweet to sexy (pretty sure she, Fosse, and her costume designer created go go sultry in “Z”) in less than a breath.

The medley is the first time the special directly references Cabaret, though “Z” is very much an offshoot from the film and its success. Some costumes occasionally feel a little Cabaret, but the special doesn’t open with it. Minnelli never addresses the audience as an audience, never telling them eight cameras are filming this evening’s production. At the beginning of “Z,” Fosse and cinematographer Owen Roizman shoot Minnelli as subject. It’s not about the audience; they just happen to be there for Minnelli’s performance.

For a couple numbers, Minnelli looks up towards the balcony (but also the cameras), not out at the audience below her. Fosse looks back down at her. But then, very deftly, the camera starts watching Minnelli looking up to the overhead cameras; we watch Minnelli sing from the wrong camera, only to quickly discover there’s no wrong camera. Every different shot’s going to reveal something else about Minnelli’s performance.

Once the stage fills with dancers, Minnelli starts directly addressing the audience, sometimes to set up the next song, sometimes to take a bow; there’s a spectacular Son of a Preacher Man number, ending with Fosse doing some incredible sleight of hand with the dancers. “Z” might be a filmed live performance, but Fosse and Minnelli are packaging it for the television audience. Or, frankly, theatrical. Fosse and Roizman shoot Minnelli as the only visible figure surrounded by darkness a few times, and it’d be devastating on the big screen.

There are some bumps, of course. Preacher Man is the last great number until the medley; after its commercial break, there’s a cute song about New Yawkers in love, including Minnelli and the dancers acting out a bunch of it. But it’s not a showstopper; it’s just more examples of Minnelli’s remarkable abilities.

The real problems are the last two songs before the medley sprint.

First is You’ve Let Yourself Go, which could be the anthem for the “Are the Straights Okay?” meme about a wife sick of her husband getting bald and chubby. Then comes My Mammy, a song Minnelli would regularly perform as a standard, all about how your slave mammy always loves you. I guess it’d be worse if it were a white dude singing it (as they often did), but yikes. Thank goodness Fosse and Minnelli weren’t pitching a musical Gone With the Wind… someone might’ve said yes.

Fosse tries with Let Yourself Go, using some of the spotlighting techniques he’d already iterated, but Mammy’s just a simple “it’s a variety special” number. Thank goodness. Hopefully, the blandness will make it forgettable.

The medley saves the day; the commercial, cross-promotional medley to remind people they really liked the super-depressing pre-Holocaust movie (or to encourage people with peppy dance numbers to see said film) is one hell of a way to save the day. But it works because it’s Fosse and Minnelli.

Like its star, director, cast, and crew, “Liza with a Z” is phenomenal.

This post is part of the Fifth Broadway Bound Blogathon hosted by Rebecca of Taking Up Room.

Cabaret (1972, Bob Fosse)

The first act of Cabaret is about introducing British guy Michael York to Weimar-era Berlin and to the life and times of his neighbor Liza Minnelli. Minnelli’s an American ex-pat; she’s landed in a cabaret and is trying to sing, dance, and sleep her way into movies. York’s there to teach English and get some experience before he becomes a boring Cambridge professor.

The second act is about the rise of Nazism in the early thirties and how much effect it can have on ex-pats. Or it would be if York and Minnelli were paying attention; instead, they’re letting rich German guy Helmut Griem play with them. Griem is in need of affordable diversions, and York and Minnelli are broke.

The third act is about the tragedy of York and Minnelli and how the problems of little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in the crazy world. Director Fosse’s got an inspired narrative distance to York and Minnelli—he has it throughout the film, but in the third act, it’s even better because first, it pays off. Everyone shows their hand, both the characters and then Fosse revealing how the film’s actually been working, and the third act works through the repercussions. It’s sort of like the third act is an extended epilogue to the epical arc the film only barely spotlights.

Because while York and Minnelli are drinking champagne and playing with Griem, their friends Fritz Wepper and Marisa Berenson are experiencing the realities of Nazism. Wepper’s a wannabe gigolo; Berenson is the perfect mark. She’s rich and beautiful but Jewish. It’s not a problem for Wepper; it’s a problem for Berenson. Over the course of their courtship, in addition to Wepper falling hard for her, the local brownshirts start targeting her family.

Cabaret’s most salient arc is for Wepper and Berenson, who occasionally visit York and Minnelli to fill them in on the main plot. But the film’s not really about its arcs; it’s about the disquieting nightmare world everyone finds themselves in, the world of the cabaret.

Joel Grey plays the emcee at the club where Minnelli dances, but Fosse uses him throughout, an almost devil overseeing tragedies big and small. There are only a couple scenes where Grey and Minnelli interact—they have a remarkable musical number together, but Cabaret’s musical numbers are integrated into the narrative and compartmentalized from it—the scenes where Grey and Minnelli engage each other, however, are profoundly disturbing. Just like Fosse uses Grey to imply the macro changes to Germany, Grey’s also there to make some implications about Minnelli’s personal changes. Cabaret is about dreams never coming true while the nightmares instead do. Grey’s the master of ceremonies and nightmares.

Fosse shoots much of the film in close-ups, especially when York and Minnelli are becoming friends. The focus is on the characters, not their setting. Fosse zooms out for some other sequences, the ones contextualizing the characters in the changing Germany. The changing Germans then get the close-ups, Fosse emphasizing the humanity of their inhumanity. There’s a devastating beer garden Nazi youth singing sequence (the master race has such bad teeth and skin) where Fosse malevolently reveals the extent of Nazism among the populace. York’s ostensibly the one watching the revelation unfold, but it’s the viewer. York’s going to get to put his head in the sand while the audience presumably knows what’s coming.

It’s unclear how much the growing Nazi movement impacts York and Minnelli’s arc. It definitely has some effect, but a lot is going on; the film never reveals anywhere near all of it. Actually, the film doesn’t even show most of it. The audience is not privy to York and Minnelli’s thoughts or secrets, just what they’re going to share with the world or one another. And if they’re keeping secrets from each other, it passes over to the audience.

Minnelli and York are tragic characters without being tragic figures. Fosse always finds a way to show the character through the caricature, which is quite the trick given the importance of caricature in the cabaret performances—the most terrifying implication, of course, is Grey’s emcee isn’t a horrifying sight gag but is an active participant. It’s never more impressive than with Minnelli, however. It’s a sensational part, with Fosse and Minnelli able to do all sorts of minor character developments and reveals along the way. York’s got the epical arc—young English man abroad—and Minnelli gets the character study. Even with the film presenting Minnelli almost entirely through York’s observation in the second act. When Minnelli does a musical number, and York’s not there, it takes a second to remember it’s her movie. Well, it’s the cabaret’s movie, and she’s in the cabaret.

Fosse leans heavily into making the Life is a Cabaret song metaphor work for the whole picture. Fosse and cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth don’t exactly soft-focus the non-cabaret scenes, but there’s always more reality to the musical numbers. The camera captures the performers waiting and watching from backstage, for example. Or whatever magic Unsworth does to make the stage’s lights visually sear without changing the lighting mood. Cabaret is one hell of a gorgeous film. As impressive as Unsworth’s photography gets, David Bretherton’s editing is even better. He and Fosse cut the musical numbers precisely, seemingly on the actors’ rhythm, but the rest is just as well-edited. Every cut in Cabaret is divine.

Great costumes from Charlotte Fleming, production design from Rolf Zehetbauer, and sound from David Hildyard. The music—Ralph Burns arranging—is excellent. Ditto Jay Presson Allen’s script. Obviously, Fosse is the superstar, but he’s got a great crew and cast.

Minnelli and Grey give the best performances, then York. York never gets to be flashy—he is British, after all—and does an excellent job radiating nervous energy. Wepper and Berenson are outstanding. Griem’s fine. He’s just a shallow blue blood, de facto glamorous, and Cabaret’s about what’s behind the glamour. Both real and imagined.

It’s a devastating and devastatingly good motion picture.

Arthur 2: On the Rocks (1988, Bud Yorkin)

With the exception of Jill Eikenberry, all of the cast members from the original return for Arthur 2: On the Rocks. Cynthia Sikes replaces her. Eikenberry’s absence means she’s the only person who doesn’t embarrass herself. I’m sorry, did I say embarrass? I more meant humiliate.

Worse, director Yorkin and screenwriter Andy Breckman don’t just reserve the humiliation for the returning cast… the new cast members (like Kathy Bates, Paul Benedict and Sikes) humiliate themselves too. Watching Arthur 2, seeing actors who gave great performances in what are supposedly the same roles now giving terrible ones–Geraldine Fitzgerald is just awful, ditto for Stephen Elliott. Elliott’s the worse of the two, however.

As for leads Liza Minnelli and Dudley Moore–who were so precious and cute and good in the original–oh, they’re bad. Minnelli’s better, but only because Moore’s debasing himself in this one.

Besides a fifty-three year-old Moore no longer being adorable as an obnoxious drunk in the lead, the problem is the script. Yorkin’s direction is definitely lame, but Breckman’s script is atrocious. He tries to mimic the first film without actually developing the characters. There’s an unclear interim between the two films (it ranges from three to six years, never the actual eight) and it just goes to show how little thought Breckman puts into anything here.

Arthur 2: On the Rocks does have one big distinction–there’s nothing good about it. Even Burt Bacharach’s score is lousy. It’s a dismal, long, unfunny debacle.

Arthur (1981, Steve Gordon)

Steve Gordon died the year after Arthur came out, so he never made any other films, which is an exceptional tragedy. Arthur is a singular comedy–it’s a mix of laugh-out-loud comedy, romantic comedy, sincere human relationships and genuine character development. The first two are not mutually exclusive, but I’m not even sure Woody Allen’s managed to combine them with the second two (two of Woody’s regular producers, in fact, produced Arthur). Gordon frequently gets affecting hilarious scenes going–usually involving John Gielgud–and the film’s a joy to watch.

For the last third, Gordon takes a hint from Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and sets everything at one location. (Oddly, as Dudley Moore shuffles in–the character’s a complete drunk and Moore’s got some incredible bits with how far he’ll go to protect his alcohol–I thought it’d be interesting if Gordon did the Deeds close, but didn’t even realize he had until I started typing this post up). It’s a good format for the close, but also the only part where Gordon stumbles. He offers the film’s most profound moments, then shies away. Worse, he continues this absurd life-threatening subplot, which kind of worked as a joke in a scene in the middle, but at the end… it had me thinking about framed bellboys instead of the movie itself.

The acting in the film is all excellent. Gielgud’s performance as Moore’s exasperated but loving butler is exceptional. The scenes with him and Moore are all great, just getting better as the film goes along. Moore, as the leading man, is a comic genius–he can make his heel of a character utterly sympathetic from the first moment on film. Also great are Anne De Salvo, Ted Ross and Barney Martin. Strangely–or maybe not–Liza Minnelli’s best scenes are the ones without Moore. She and Moore are good together, but they’re very cute, and when it’s her and Martin or her and Gielgud, the scenes just have a lot more resonance. It’s a romantic comedy, of course she’s got to have scenes with Moore, but the rest of her scenes–even the brief second watching her at work–are when it’s obvious Gordon was really writing the character.

For a while, I thought Arthur was going to be that supreme example I’d compare all other popular comedies against. The way Gordon serves actual human regard with the funny stuff, it’s incredibly rare (because the laughs Gordon goes for are cheap, popular laughs). So, it might not be the ultimate comparison, but it’s still great.

The Oh in Ohio (2006, Billy Kent)

Short movies–under ninety minutes–are having a creative resurgence of late. I’m thinking primarily of Ed Burns’s Looking for Kitty as the model (and it was well under ninety), but The Oh in Ohio is another fine example. The way the filmmakers keep Ohio short is very interesting. They end the movie during the last five or six minutes of the second act. There is no third act. There’s a lot of suggestion to what might be coming in the third act, even foreshadowing to a pleasantly surprising, comedic ending, but it isn’t in the film. There are a handful of fade-to-black scene transitions and when the last one came, I was not expecting the film to end. It was a deft–a term I’ve only used one other time here on The Stop Button–unexpected narrative move and nothing in The Oh in Ohio prepared me for it.

There’s very little in the way narrative drive–there’s an abject lack of conflict after the first act–and I kept waiting for a crisis needing resolution and one never arrived. In some ways, the film summarizes instead of plays out in scene, but has enough solid scenes going to give the illusion they’re where the most important events are playing out. Or it might not be deft and the screenwriters just got lucky. Either way, it’s interesting because for a narrative to play out in the traditional structure only to stop, canceling its traditional trajectory, raises a lot of questions about where a story should in terms of creating the fullest experience. The Oh in Ohio could have tacked on another fifteen to twenty-five minutes and it would never have ended quite as well. Because romantic comedies–and The Oh in Ohio is a romantic comedy–tend to have their own pattern and they don’t do it for narrative quality but because romantic comedies really only have seventy or eighty minutes worth of story and they need push it so people won’t dismiss them for running under ninety (or ninety-five, ninety-five sounds more respectable still). So The Oh in Ohio shows cutting and closing sooner, on a high point, might be the way to go. I can think of one or two romantic comedies right now with too long endings, where cutting earlier would have worked better.

Other than its narrative innovation (or possible innovation, I’ll check with the patent office), The Oh in Ohio’s got Parker Posey and she’s excellent, but it’s also got a great Paul Rudd performance. Rudd frequently disappoints, but not in this film. Danny DeVito’s good, so is Keith David. Liza Minnelli has a fantastic cameo.

The laugh-out-loud comedy scenes mix well with the not-laugh-out-loud ones and there’s still the traditional narrative going on to hold things together. I also use the word “quirky” sparingly (though, apparently, three times to date), but The Oh in Ohio is a quirky film and I feel like I shouldn’t have had to remember on my own. Someone else should have been talking about it.*

* I have a feeling they were not, because when I went to go to look for DVD reviews, I found four. Apparently, the superstars at HBO Home Video decided to pan and scan the Panavision frame to an HD-friendly 1.85:1, which really bothered me during the scenes when the framing was so obviously off–like when a car drove off frame but was still audible and the scene didn’t cut until it had time to traverse (out of frame, obviously) the rest of the shot.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Billy Kent; screenplay by Adam Wierzbianski, from a story by Sarah Bird, Kent and Wierzbianski; director of photography, Ramsey Nickell; edited by Paul Bertino and Michael R. Miller; music by Bruno Coon; production designer, Martina Buckley; produced by Miranda Bailey, Francey Grace and Amy Salko Robertson; released by Cyan Pictures.

Starring Parker Posey (Priscilla Chase), Danny DeVito (Wayne the Pool Guy), Miranda Bailey (Sherri), Paul Rudd (Jack Chase), Keith David (Coach Popovitch), Tim Russ (Douglas), Mischa Barton (Kristen Taylor), Liza Minnelli (Alyssa Donahue), Robert John Burke (Binky Taylor) and Heather Graham (Justine).

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