BERLIN KABARETT

Nicknamed "It Girl" from Yves Saint-Laurent, starring for Stanley Kubrick and Luchino Visconti, Marisa Berenson is Kirsten, the manageress of one of Berlin's great cabarets during the early years of the rise of Nazism under the Weimar Republic. While the German capital is experiencing a period of economic and social misery and full decadence of morals, Kirsten is carrying on her club without making too much of a fuss. Surrounded by her son, her former writer-lover, from a composer in vogue and from two musicians, she takes us through the evocation and remembrance of glorious pasts. A satirical and tragic traversal into Germany's darkest era, in an artistic context in which the utmost fires of expressionism are glimpsed.

The origin of the word 'cabaret' is confused and its etymology uncertain. It is believed that the term dates back to the ancient d'oïl language. In the Middle Ages it designated a popular haunt where people served from drink and from eat, and where, at the same time, visitors could be distracted by attending to simple and short performances: skits, songs, small theatrical forms, monologues, improvisations. to mid-19th century, in France, Germany and throughout central Europe, the word acquired its current meaning. Until then, cabaret had been a simple place of entertainment, frequented by the people and the petty bourgeoisie. from that moment, it gradually became enriched with a political, even ideological, dimension, making it a protagonist of the social and cultural scene. Cabaret becomes associated with the concepts of protest and vindication. At the same time, it occupies a cultural and artistic role in the German avant-garde, especially in the aftermath of the 1918 defeat. This is the period when the best authors of the time, including Brecht and Wedekind, also actively frequented cabarets. The cinema of the 1930s draws inspiration from it. Expressionism finds its place there. The German cabaret makes its way into national mythology as a symbol of decadence. It has its own history, culture, and aesthetics, which are dark, violent, deliberately morbid, and which have found favorable ground in all critical periods of national history.

This is how, to starting in the 1920s, cabaret became a mirror of German society, particularly during the Weimar Republic and the rise to power of Nazism. During that period, cabaret begins to to repudiate the cultural ambitions it had developed in the past. After the defeat of 1918, Berlin's reputation as a city of night, pleasure, and debauchery was not slow to to manifest itself. Berlin is evoked on a par with Babylon and Sodom! Once the exaltation of the glory of the empire is over, cabarets multiply in the capital, becoming veritable escape valves from the economic and social crisis. Variety invades the cabaret in its more sensual, more physical (body exhibition, appearance of nudity...), therefore more erotic, and soon also commercial, flowing into prostitution. Homosexuality invests cabaret. Censorship will intervene only later, as the Nazi regime takes hold. "Pleasure" is the watchword, according to an absolute concept of freedom that borders on anarchy and is inspired by nihilism. However, until 1928 islands of artistic resistance still subsist, under the influence of musicians such as Friedrich Holländer (author of the music of L'Ange bleu), writers such as Tucholsky, art directors such as Max Reinhardt, poets such as Walter Mehring, and theater men such as Brecht or Piscator, all of whom are to committed to preserving the even political tradition of cabaret and to introducing new forms of musical expression, particularly jazz. But it will all be in vain. As the years go by, the degradation of cabaret programming deepens. Social misery reaches its peak at the threshold of the 1930s, but political and social protest again invades the scene, prompting a strong reaction from the police of the nascent Nazi party. This is the era when Goebbels, appointed "Gauleiter" of Berlin, unleashes a violent hunt for cabarets, ordering the destruction of theaters and the exile, sending to concentration camps or assassination of the most renowned artists. In 1933 the last cabarets in Berlin will also be destroyed, whose memory the capital currently seeks to revive, albeit through a sweetened aesthetic representation.