With a Z!
Liza with a Z: (U)
Dir: Bob Fosse, 1972, USA, 51 Mins
Cast: Liza Minnelli
Review by Corinna Tomrley
Camp it may be - and how could it not? - but as with much campness, this has a depth and substance to its kitsch extravaganza. On the 31st of May 1972 at New York’s Lyceum Theater, a one-off show called ‘Liza with a Z’ was filmed for NBC and sponsored by Singer sewing machines. Michael Arick (the film’s restorer) calls it a ‘documentary about a performance’, but it was also the second opportunity to document what Minnelli calls ‘a strange, wonderful collaboration’. Not yet released at the time of this single performance, Cabaret had seen an alchemy between Fosse, Minnelli, Kander and Ebb that produced one of the most respected film musicals of the last century. Riding high on the results a concert was created from the talents of this bunch to show-case Minnelli’s performance prowess. Fosse filmed it for television with his nouvelle vague edge and 34 years later, a restored version financed by Showtime and shown at the Toronto Film Festival, is now released with a few smashing extras onto DVD.
Minnelli said of Kander and Ebb ‘they invented me’ and Fosse too had a significant impact along with Disco-Design God Halston, Hair-sculptor Simon Scudera and Make-up artist Christina Smith (those flesh-flashing diva duds! Those twenties ‘bangs’! Those floor-scraping eyelashes!). This performance is surely as much a capsule of that creation as Cabaret ever was. It’s of it’s time - the grooved up vaudeville classic ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ all Fosse’d and slightly disturbing as was his effect - but this is more than a curio; it lives up to its legend and leaves one slightly haunted.
What enhances the experience are the extras. The panel discussion at the Toronto Film Festival verges on the schmaltzy and the hysterical (the audience & Minnelli in a mutual love-fest) but somehow it holds together and Liza-The-Story-Teller shines. She regales us with tales of fashion, nipples and eyelash glue, boldly stating that her makeup ‘influenced a whole era’. I was anticipating more such tales on the commentary but Minnelli instead gives an almost blow-by-blow description of the performance, breaking down each song; the feelings, the motivations and the characters behind each number. She is (as Streisand describes herself) an actress who sings, and strongly inhabits each persona. Every nuance is heightened as we learn what Fosse told her here, how she improvised a bit there, which smooth dance moves earned her false hips.
The print, spruced up from 16mm to 35L is a rather striking artefact, with a cutting-room-floor saved extra of ‘Mein Herr’ proving what it once was - all bleached oranges and murky grain. This is a fitting document of a performer in her prime melding with a unique director/choreographer, resulting in a fairly satisfying DVD package. At the end of the evening Vincente Minnelli told Fosse, ‘You have made something strange and extraordinary’ and after spending time with this DVD presentation one would be hard-pressed to argue with that.