Liza: Ja--the Film: Nein

By JAY COCKS

CABARET

Directed by BOB FOSSE

Screenplay by JAY ALLEN

First came the short stories by Christopher Isherwood. Then John Van Druten strung them together to make a play called I Am a Camera, which eventually became a movie with Julie Harris. All this furnished the raw material six years ago for a Broadway musical called Cabaret, which is now reincarnated as a movie.

Something has been lost in the translations. Isherwood's stories were taut, bittersweet recollections of bohemian Berlin in the early '30s. By the time Scenarist Allen and Director Fosse have wrung them out, what's left --with one exception--is mostly slack and sour. The exception is their vibrant star Liza Minnelli, who cocks a derby over a green-shadowed eye and struts off with the movie, or as much of it as is worth carrying.

The central setting is the Kit Kat Club, a sleazy microcosm of Germany in transition. The songs and dances performed there form an ironic counterpoint to the action, which has mainly to do with the mad affairs of Americanborn Sally Bowles (Liza's role), a Kit Kat entertainer, who has dedicated her life to "divine decadence."

Sally's antic and readily available charms are sampled by a young Englishman called Brian Roberts (Michael York), who is in Berlin to study for a doctorate in philosophy. What he gets instead is a seminar in lowlife and a confrontation with his own repressed homosexuality. His tutor in the latter is a baron named Max (Helmut Griem), who has also passed a few nights with Sally. "Screw Max!" exclaims an exas perated Brian one day. "I do," replies Sally. "So," says Brian, "do I." This complicates matters, since Sally and Brian are in love and Sally is pregnant -- by whom, nobody seems sure.

In a mostly vain attempt to lend substance to these goings-on, there is a subplot involving a romance between a rich Jewish beauty and an impover ished gigolo who is masquerading as an Aryan. There are also solemn but su perficial references to Nazis and inti mations of the holocaust to come.

Bob Fosse's direction is as chaotic as it was in his previous Sweet Char ity, a desperate scramble after a style.

The musical numbers by John Kander and Fred Ebb are diluted Kurt Weill and far too numerous. The actors, how ever, are all good. Along with a chorus of sclerotic voluptuaries, Joel Grey as the Kit Kat M.C. puts the cabaret acts across with captivating vulgarity.

Liza Minnelli is a dazzling entertainer, which, ironically, makes her less than effective as Sally. It is impossible to believe, once Liza starts singing, that this is a girl doomed to spend her career belting out tunes in third-rate clubs. Her talents as a performer are simply too great for the part -- and for the movie.

. Jay Cocks

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