Having read The Berlin Diaries by Christopher Isherwood (reviewed on this site last year) I felt the need to watch Cabaret which somehow I've never seen before. Very entertaining of course, about bohemian Berlin in the last days of the Weimar Republic but also very interesting in the way the rise of the Nazis is protrayed. This is an understated background to the film throughout but also the (unfortunately true) impression that they enjoyed wide popularity with 'ordinary' Germans is not ignored or denied, not always the case. This support is powerfully brought home when the one song to be sung outside the cabaret club (in a beer garden), Tomorrow Belongs to Me, is revealed to be being sung by a Hitler Youth member and one by one everyone in the garden gets up to join in singing and saluting. The only person not to join in is an older man, perhaps having fought in the First World War he knows what's coming.
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