Cabaret is a great movie musical, made, miraculously, without compromises. It's miraculous because the material is hard and unsentimental, and until now there has never been a diamond-hard big American movie musical…. [It] is everything one hopes for and more; if it doesn't make money, it will still make movie history.

After Cabaret, it should be a while before performers once again climb hills singing or a chorus breaks into song on a hayride; it is not merely that Cabaret violates the wholesome approach of big musicals but that it violates the pseudo-naturalistic tradition—the "Oklahoma!"-"South Pacific"-"West Side Story" tradition, which requires that the songs appear to grow organically out of the story. (p. 409)

The usual movie approach to decadent periods of history is to condemn decadence while attempting to give us vicarious thrills. Here, in a prodigious balancing act, Bob Fosse … keeps this...