La donna è un male necessario

This British film version of the stage play I AM A CAMERA is based on Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Stories." This is the source material for the famous musical CABARET.

Julie Harris, a major stage actress of her day, reprises her 1951 Tony Award winning role as Sally Bowles. She's a far cry from the Liza Minnelli character but the basic "Sally" is all here despite the various film codes that would have blocked this story from being filmed in Hollywood. Harris is perhaps stagy but she's also quite good as the madcap and maddening Sally. Her singing number is obviously dubbed (by Marlene Dietrich no less) although Harris apparently sings for herself in other moments.

Laurence Harvey (with the very ugly hair) plays Isherwood with zero charm and can't even make the character interesting. Shelley Winters does little with the role of Natalia (Marian Winters won a supporting Tony for the play), and Anton Diffring is OK as Fritz. Ron Randell plays the caddish Clive but seems a tad loud. Lee Seidl is funny as the landlady.

Yet despite the overall staginess and cheap look, Harris takes center stage and she is amazing. This film was released the same year as EAST OF EDEN in which Harris gives a glowing performance as Abra. Comparing the two performances gives a good look at the talent Miss Harris possesses. These two characters couldn't be more unalike. Harris' Sally preens and prances about and growls out a very lascivious laugh. She also acts circles around the boring Harvey.

Without the music and with a familiar storyline, many viewers may find little here to recommend this film, but it's a great chance to see the great Julie Harris repeating what was probably a very shocking role in 1951.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Much reviled when it first appeared, (inspiring the famous review 'Me No Leica'), this precursor of "Cabaret" can now be looked at in comparison and it's not half bad. It's certainly no classic but it has its own wayward charm, (the film version of "Cabaret" follows this plot whereas the stage version changed the plot somewhat). One should, of course, resist the temptation to snicker when Laurence Harvey's Christopher Isherwood, (it keeps the original author's real name; God Knows what Isherwood thought of it), describes himself as 'a confirmed bachelor' and while Harvey is an utterly inadequate 'hero', (he's virtually asexual), and Shelly Winters woefully miscast as Fraulien Landauer, (the part Marisa Berenson played in "Cabaret"), Julie Harris is a perfectly marvellous Sally, (it's a lovely piece of comic acting), and Anton Diffring is first-rate as Fritz, the German-Jew in love with Shelly's character. Of course, if "Cabaret" had never come along you might ask yourself would this ever have seen the light of day again. That it has been revived may not quite be cause for celebration but it's perfectly acceptable all the same.

Lots of history behind this story of Sally Bowles, party-girl in 1930s Berlin who befriends a stolid English gent amidst the Nazi uprising. Curious, rather indifferent drama isn't helped by Julie Harris as Bowles; Harris tries hard, but she's too intelligent a presence to be convincing as a flake and her big moments don't come off. Non-flashy adaptation of both Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Stories" and John Van Druten's subsequent play, it is sure to interest fans of Bob Fosse's "Cabaret" as a great deal of the dialogue mirrors passages in "Cabaret" almost verbatim. Those who stumble upon it unawares will probably find the movie stilted and dull. It's little more than a footnote now in this chain of literature and cinematic events. ** from ****

Sally Bowles, the glittering, swaggering, sexually adventurous nightclub chanteuse at the centre of Cabaret is one of the most memorable figures in 70s cinema. Liza Minnelli, who played her in Bob Fosse's critically acclaimed 1972 musical, won an Oscar in the part that seemed tailor-made for her — from the black bowler hat to those kinky boots.

It may be hard to believe now, but in the mid-50s, Julie Harris was Sally Bowles. She played her on stage in John Van Druten's play I Am a Camera — winning a Tony award — and reprised the role in Henry Cornelius's 1955 film. Both works were based on Christopher Isherwood's The Berlin Stories, but their portrayals of Berlin in the early 30s could scarcely be more different. To appreciate Harris's take on Sally you really have to banish memories of the Kit Kat Club, Joel Grey's louche MC and those fabulous songs.

"The more worthless the book the more they need noise and alcohol to launch it." Middle-aged writer Christopher Isherwood (Laurence Harvey) begins this semi-autobiographical tale of his youthful adventures in pre-Second World War Germany with the discovery that sex sells. The irrepressible Sally Bowles has turned author, with the provocatively entitled The Lady Goes on Hoping. Some things never change.

After this Bloomsbury-set opening sequence, I Am a Camera flashes back to Berlin on New Year's Eve 1931. Isherwood, narrates the story of his life as a struggling author, living in a boarding house run by the long-suffering Fräulein Schneider. So far, it seems that his one moment of inspiration has been to come up with that title: "I am a camera, with its shutter open, just watching it, quite detached." Isherwood's professional detachment is tested when he accompanies his friend Fritz (Anton Diffring) to a club, where Sally is performing. In what we soon learn is a familiar pattern, she is soon left high a dry by her latest beau. Feeling sorry for this "naive" girl, our hero gallantly offers her a room for the night, though the platonic terms of their relationship are made clear from the outset.

It's not long before the totally out-of-his depth novelist realises that his new friend's modus operandi is to shock people. Asked why she wears green nail polish, Sally cheerfully explains "To attract men!" As their life together descends into penury and bickering, he alternates between fascination at Sally's lack of morals and self-pity at his inability to make progress with his work.

Harvey went on to play the social-climbing Joe Lampton in Room at the Top and the brainwashed assassin Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate. I find him more convincing as an embittered cynic than as a suave leading man, so he's well-suited to the role of the permanently exasperated Isherwood. When his one clumsy attempt to seduce Sally is repelled, his sardonic response is to ask "A puritan all of a sudden, or just where I'm concerned?" With her throaty laugh, theatrical mannerisms and fine comedic timing, Harris's Sally is an enthralling and infuriating companion. In the film's most enjoyable sequences, she drags the hard-up Isherwood into a bar, where she downs a succession of champagne cocktails. The arrival of filthy rich American Clive (Ron Randell) leads to a wild party — complete with a hydro-therapist played by Patrick McGoohan.

Of course the sexual dynamics would have looked very different if this film hadn't been made in the mid-50s. There's no hint here that the writer might be gay, or even bisexual – as Michael York's Brian is in Cabaret. Instead, the would-be novelist is just celibate, waspish and openly disapproving of Sally's promiscuity. In the film of Isherwood's later novel, A Single Man, George (Colin Firth) and his best friend Charley (Julianne Moore) have once been on intimate terms, but she reluctantly has to accept his homosexuality.

John Collier's screenplay is at its sharpest and most assured in the scenes of domestic cut and thrust between the flat-mates. But attempts to bring the social and political unrest of pre-war Berlin into the mix are less successful. Though Berlin was on the cusp of seismic events you get little sense here of the growing unease on the streets, while the nightclub scenes are more dreary than decadent. There is an awkward romantic subplot involving Fritz and the wealthy Natalia (a miscast Shelley Winters) that tries to address the dilemma facing Jewish citizens. Isherwood makes a belated attempt to reclaim his independence by brawling with some Nazis in the street, and rebukes Fräulein Schneider for an anti-Semitic remark.

Cornelius, who directed only five films, had to work within the censorship restrictions of the time. This movie may have been an X-certificate in its day, but the Sally of 1955 doesn't get to be as wanton — or show as much leg — as the Sally of Cabaret. As a portrait of the artist as a young man, I Am a Camera is funny and charming and the two leads have good chemistry. But if you want to know why money still makes the world go round, the Kit Kat Club is the place to go.

This film was inexplicably made in England, and though there is some staginess - noticably in the yelling of some of the actors - director Henry Cornelius provides some clever imagery eg the decadence of the Berlin nightclub by a piglet and two smashing beerglasses, and Christopher standing at a window in the past bringing out us out of the narrative flashback. It also features a remarkable hotel party setpiece.

The infamous role of Sally Bowles is written as a pretentious innocent, and the knowledge that Isherwood was gay feeds into the notion of Sally as a coded drag queen, or at least, an effeminate gay man. The screenplay is full of gay subtext eg Christopher's narcissism demonstrated in his lotions and weights and boufant hairstyle, Sally's descriptions of male musculature, the repeated use of sausages, Sally telling Christopher he doesn't "understand" women, his describing her sex appeal as "inadequate", the rectal thermometer, his massage, his confession that he is "not the marrying type", and fear of being "embroiled" with her. The major difference between this treatment and that of Bob Fosse's Cabaret is the Clive Mortimer character, who here is heterosexual, but would be later turned into the bisexual Max.

Julie Harris performed the role of Sally Bowles on Broadway, and one's opinion of her performance cannot help but be influenced by Liza Minnelli (as is one's opinion of the film as a piece). Harris works against her basic miscasting (she doesn't even use an English accent when we are told Sally is English) because Sally is such an artificial creation. She is like an Actors Studio version of a junior Auntie Mame, and even when her antics become tiresome, she is still far more likeable than Laurence Harvey's starched and basically asexual Christopher. Harris may not have Minnelli's street urchin vulnerability, but she has some inspired moments - posing in front of a mirror wearing a mink coat, her drunken giggling, looking behind a silk scarf, or licking milk with a wild tongue.