Sorry this post is a couple days later than usual. After I'd already committed myself to the song and dance of Liza, I found myself regretting my impulsiveness.
Liza is not for the faint of heart since her voice with all its cackles and over dramatic peaks and valleys can be a little grating. But commitment to my growing following of readers won out over my reluctance and I headed forth into the bizzaro world (the fact that there's 7 inches of snow on the ground and I'm pretty much stuck at home helped too).
Seeing the film now more than 35 years after it originally debuted I found it very hard to separate Liza the tabloid caricature from her Sally Bowles character. The seeds of her tempestuous personal life are all here. The outlandish sequins, the furs, the boozyness at all times of day, the always slightly drunk laughter, and the self centered attitude. Here is a character that can say things like "my baby may be the most important baby in the history of the world, next to Jesus" without the slightest hint of irony.
It's as though Liza, knowing she had a good singing voice, threw herself into the Sally Bowles character. Then she won an Oscar and decided that if she could be a winner on the silver screen acting like that, then dammit she was going to act like that all the time.
The fact that she falls in love with two gay men in the movie is eerily parallel to her real life "David Gest" existence.
Another thing that weighed on my mind as I watched this film, is that it came out the same year as the "Godfather," and Joel Grey actually beat Al Pacino for Best Supporting Actor. Hands down this has to be one of the academy's biggest boneheaded moves of all time. I'm not knocking Grey's performance. He's creepy, and has a good singing voice, and he sure knows how to apply lipstick. But he's little more than a sideshow in this film, thrown in whenever the director wanted to squeeze in some music, and at seemingly random times whenever the film wanted to heighten it's nightmarish qualities.
Now after all this it may sound like I'm about to give this film a sharp cane up the ass and ream it out for being a self important drugged out 70's crap fest.
But that is not the case. The songs are remarkably sturdy and catchy.
And the movie isn't just a stage musical put on film, it's nicely developed as a picture. And despite Liza's tendency to bug her eyes and make googly faces, her flightiness actually kind of works for the character. I don't know that it's best Actress Material, but its good work.
Director Bob Fosse does great choreography and great costumes and this film undoubtedly influenced many musicals that came after it. And seen on its own terms, the film is weightier than it has a right to be with such a feather-brained character at its center.
Buy it, Rent It, Watch it on Cable, or Skip It: Watch it on cable (unless you really love musicals, then stick it in the netflix queue)
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