What one remembers from [Cabaret] are the visual elements:

(1) the touching moment in which Fritz hides his frayed cuffs from Natalia;

(2) Joel Grey's garish makeup and facial contortions;

(3) the Nazi beating intercut with the Swiss hand-clapping dance at the cabaret;

(4) the splattered body of a murder victim on the streets as Max's limousine passes;

(5) the ugly spectacle of the Kit Kat Klub—ladies wrestling in mud; the laughing crowd; the telephones on the tables; and most of all,

(6) the method by which the sweet-faced youth is revealed to be a Nazi brown shirt. (p. 237)

These images, largely the responsibility of photographer Geoffrey Unsworth—and the lingering ones far exceed the six listed above—become the visual equivalents of Isherwood's writing. On screen, lifted from the pages of Goodbye to Berlin are the drifters, the whores, the cabaret artistes, the S.A. men, and the society children. As flickering...