In transforming and old text into a new one, a composer selects what to include and what to exclude. How and why have these choices been made in the texts you have studied?

However the most significant transformation in “Cabaret” is the shift in focus.  Fosse’s “Cabaret” places Sally Bowles as the central protagonist and through her portrays many of the themes.  

Sally in “Goodbye to Berlin” is a “startling” “good looker” but a talentless, shallow, selfish and unrealistic dreamer whose desire for fame is an attempt to escape from reality.  However Sally in “Cabaret” is a charismatic and talented performer, it is her talent and character that ensnares men rather than her beauty.  This is done both in order to enable her to become the central character as well as for cinematic purposes.  She also possesses or acquires depth and insight in “Cabaret”, especially apparent in the final song “Life is a cabaret” where her outstretched arms displays desperation, resilience and a growing understanding of her world.  Both Sallys share a common ground in their dedication and desire for fame – “Work comes before everything” and is used to represent the decadent self-absorbed behaviour of the era.  

Like Sally, Brian – Christopher Isherwood – is also significantly altered. The purely plutonic relationship between Christopher and Sally is changed into the central love affair that drives much of the film. Brian is used in “cabaret” to reflect and highlight the ‘decadence’ of Sally and the rest of the characters.  He is purposively left to be an outsider “an odd and amazing creature’, as he is in the novel.  Brian embodies the ideologies of 70s America and through him the responders are able to judge and condemn Sally and her world.  His role becomes especially important in the abortion sequence where his support and subsequent lack of understanding –“tell me why?” makes it easy for the audience to denounce her and her action.  This represents an important aspect of transformation – the effects of societies values on texts.  With the 1970s post war conservative backlash, feminism and abortion was not widely accepted.  Therefore Sally’s choice of career over family “I have this crazy idea of one day making some thing of my self” is damned, unlike in Goodbye to Berlin where there is very little judgement.  

Brian is also used in “Cabaret” to explore the theme of homosexuality, which is heavily insinuated in “Goodbye to Berlin’s” “On Ruegen Island”.  Fosse uses hints such as the androgenous woman and the drag queen at the Kit Kat Klub to suggest homosexual activity.  But it is Brian’s relationship with Max and finally his confession “Screw Max…So do I” that is the most powerful evidence of homosexuality in the film.  Though the film does not flaunt Max and Brian’s relationship with the same vigour as Max and Sally or Sally and Brian due to the homophobic attitude in the 70s it still makes its existence unmistakable.

Aside from transformations occurring because of the difference in the value systems of the societies are transformations that take place due to the change in medium. The language of films is very different to the language of novels; a film is first and foremost a visual text so it’s the makeup, the lighting, the costumes, and the camera angles that have to replace the subtlety of the written words – The cleanliness of the abortion scene in the novel is replaced by the cluttered setting of Sally’s room in Cabaret to highlight impropriety of her decision.

Transformations take place in order to make a text relevant to a new generation.  The composer changes aspects to make it applicable to the responders as well as to make it viable in a new medium.