Berlin in the early
1930s. Among those performing in the cabaret at the Kit Kat Klub is Sally
Bowles, a muddled romantic
with an untidy sex life, a mysterious and no doubt largely fictionalized family
background, and a probably ineffectual yearning for stardom which keeps her in
constant hopes of being discovered and taken away form all this. She soon falls
in with Brian Roberts, a young English graduate who
has come to Berlin to improve his German and
scrapes a living by
giving
English language lessons. They occupy neighboring rooms in the Schneider
boarding house, and rapidly develop a curious brother-sister relationship.
Brian admits to having been disastrously unsuccessful in his previous relations
with girls, and Sally does not push him, but eventually they become sexually
involved. Meanwhile Brian takes on two pupils, Natalia Landauer, a rich Jewish
girl, and Fritz Wendel, a friend of Sally's. Fritz, a self-confessed
adventurer, sets out to captivate Natalia, and then himself falls in love with
her; but she will not marry him because of the increasingly difficult position
in which she finds herself as a Jew during the rise of the Nazi party.
Eventually Fritz admits to Brian that he is also Jewish; Brian persuades him to
tell Natalia, and the pair are married. Meanwhile Sally has acquired a new
admirer, the Baron Maximilian von Heune. He adopts both Sally and Brian,
showers gifts on them, and entertains them together at his country seat. Sally
admits afterwards that she has been to bed with Max, whereupon Brian admits that
he has too. In reaction, Brian goes out and picks a fight with a couple of
Nazis, and is badly beaten. Max leaves Berlin, and Sally tells Brian that she
is pregnant, she does not know by whom. Brian is willing to marry her, but she
secretly has an abortion instead. Brian leaves Berlin, kissing Sally goodbye;
she stays on, apparently unchanged, singing at the Kit Kat Klub and waiting for
her big break to come.
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