Cabaret Film Analysis

Social and Cultural Scene Analysis task:

“Cabaret” takes place in 1931 during the fading of the German Weimar Republic) and the rise of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party.

Scene 1: Rise of the Nazi’s – Aryan young man singing in a large country inn. The song is titled ‘Tomorrow belongs to me’.

Taking place in a beer garden out in the country, Brian and Max are sitting down when a young blond boy begins singing “Tomorrow belongs to me”. The camera focuses for a long period of time on a close up of the boy’s face, emphasising his ‘German’ features and his youth. The boy embodies Hitler’s expectations of racial purity through a pure Aryan race (blonde hair, blue eyes and strong) and illustrates Hitler’s belief that the Jews were

The song is about discrimination of interracial relationships. In the scene, the "Woman" Emcee sings about is presented as an actor in an ape suit. It is not until the final line in which it is revealed that the woman is actually Jewish. The message is to show that in the eyes of people caught up in the Nazi regime, a German in love with a Jewish person is just as bad as if they were in love with an animal.

This song follows a scene where we see one of the male characters (Fritz) face some troubles with his love for Natalia, because she is Jewish and he has come to realise that if he comes clean about his real identity as a Jew he will risk his life but he is ultimately conflicted about whether his love for her is worth the risk. The cabaret is basically a twisted mirror of the German society because this song acts a commentary on how people (in this case, the Nazi party and their supporters) judged others based on ethnicity, religion, or appearance rather than qualities, as the Emcee references that the women he loves is “clever … smart … reads music, [and] doesn't smoke or drink gin . . ." but that doesn't change the fact that people