what good is sitting alone in your room

Oscar trivia: Cabaret won more Academy Awards than any other movie that has not won Best Picture - eight to be exact. Best Director, Actress, Supporting Actor, Cinematography among them. But not Best Picture.

When I was picking a movie to watch tonight, I tried to make sense of that. Then I saw that Cabaret was released in 1972. I had my answer: The Godfather. How could another movie win eight Oscars in competition with the #1 film of all time (according to IMDb voters)? Must be some flick.

Well, I just watched it. First off, it's not much like the stage musical I saw as a kid. Rather, it is exactly what Chicago would have been if it was made in the 70's.

In fact, Chicago was made in the 70's. Bob Fosse directed Cabaret (the film) in 1971, and directed Chicago (the play) in 1975. Of course, Cabaret is based on a 1965 stage musical, while Chicago (the stage musical) is adapted from the 1942 movie Roxie Hart (starring Ginger Rogers), itself a remake of 1927's Chicago (a silent movie). Confused yet?

Well, the similarities go deeper. Of course, both musicals are set in the early 30s. Chicago is set in a Depression-era America so corrupt that the only power greater than booze-runners and tommy guns is the tabloid mass media. Cabaret's backdrop is a decadent post-Weimar Berlin turning a blind eye to the rise of the Nazis. But they are both the oddest of Hollywood oddities: musicals about the dangers of escapism.

The main differences are in the actors. Both Zellweger and Zeta-Jones are more talented actresses than Minnelli, but they can't belt out a song or do the deer-in-the-headlights thing like Judy Garland, Jr. And Richard Gere ain't qualified to kiss the hem of Joel Grey's skirt. Consider: Al Pacino, James Caan, and Robert Duvall were all nominated that year for The Godfather, but Joey Grey won. We can thank Minnelli and Grey for taking Cabaret OTT where, IMHO, Chicago didn't quite manage.

On the other hand, Cabaret is basically a realist film, as Chicago is not. Cabaret is a tragedy, while Chicago is a farce. Both stories are very good in their own way, although I prefer Roxie Hart to the latter. (I admit: I think Ginger Rogers is hot.)

But the style as well as the content differ. This is where we see how much Hollywood has changed in thirty years. In 1972, it was hard to find a movie that wasn't realist in both content and tone. (Okay, maybe Godfather...) No surprise, given American society at the time: the rise of feminism, Black Panthers, environmentalism, Tricky Dick sneaking around Watergate. In 2002, I can't think of a Hollywood release that was realist in style (consider: The Two Towers, Gangs of New York, Attack of the Clones, Spiderman, Secretary, The Ring, The Hours). Shrub was shouting about weapons of mass destruction. We had now entered Fantasyland.

As Chicago won Best Picture, it's not hard to imagine that if Cabaret had been released a few weeks earlier - when it would only have had to compete with the all-but-forgotten French Connection - it too might have garnered that honor.

Having said all that, neither can touch Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann's exclamation mark, not mine)