[Fosse] has handled Cabaret like a smart Broadway musical director: always bright, always intent—not on authenticity but on keeping one step ahead of the audience's jadedness. He can do it….

Unlike the Broadway version, the musical elements are split off from the rest: almost all the songs occur on the cabaret stage, the rest of the picture is "straight." I suppose this is in aid of realism, but it doesn't quite succeed. First, as usual in movie musicals, the numbers are much too lavish and complex for the theater in which they're supposed to be done. Second, Fosse is much more comfortable with the musical numbers than with "life." But one clever non-number is more than clever. A sequence in a country beer garden begins with a close-up of an appealing youth singing a pleasant heimisch song. Slowly the camera pulls back and reveals his Nazi armband...