Subscribe: http://bit.ly/subscribetotheBFI. Greg Dyke, outgoing chairman of the BFI, introduces Cabaret (1972), Bob Fosse's period musical set in Berlin, starring Liza Minelli. Watch more on the BFI Player: http://player.bfi.org.uk/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BFI Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BritishFilmInstitute Follow us on Google+: https://plus.google.com/+britishfilminstitute/ When Joel Grey’s cross-dressing master of ceremonies peers into silvered glass at the film’s opening credits, his warped reflection could be spilled paints or Otto Dix’s ‘The Nun’ – a fittingly twisted appropriation where, inside The Kit Kat Club, anything goes. The smoky bromine-browns of its interiors and the cheer of its gender-bending song-and-dance routines draws a curtain against the political unrest of 1930s Berlin. It’s a nest for cuckoos’ eggs, providing enjoyment for decadents in the dying years of the Weimar Republic. “Outside is windy,” sings Grey, and the gathering storm grows with each street beating by Nazi paramilitaries. Bob Fosse’s Cabaret – adapted from the Broadway musical based on Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories – won eight Academy Awards, including best actress for its lead, Liza Minnelli. Minnelli gives a magnificent performance as singer Sally Bowles, an adorable ham with “ancient instincts” – so she says. Her eccentricity is both rehearsed and lived-in, applied like her sequin beauty mole and reinforced – in case of doubt – by pet catchphrases like “divinely decadent” and “most strange and extraordinary”.