The story of an American singer who, enchanted by the decadence of interwar Berlin, makes the Kit Kat Club stage her first stop on the road to film stardom, befriending a fellow American English teacher and a German millionaire in the process. This film adaptation is distinguished by its powerful use of allusion and brilliant choreography. In exemplary counterpoint, it brings together a dramatic plot, song and dance numbers, and sentimentality, along with an analysis of the growing aggression and fascist intolerance of the time (a metaphor for the ire of crowds, for the manipulation of the masses). On another level, you have the cabaret itself – grandiose, ironic, tragicomic – and the fascinating character of the vaudevillian. The overall effect of alienation is intensified by suggestive flourishes reminiscent of magical realism. Every level of the film is meticulously interconnected, depicting a time and place that was fertile ground for the rise of Nazism while also demonstrating the impossibility of breaking free from dogmatic conventions.