SWEET CHARITY

After The Sound Of Music hit big, Hollywood ploughed fortunes into widescreen spectacularflop musicals. The likes of Doctor Dolittle and

Hello, Dolly! were literally out of tune with the

Easy Rider/midnight Cowboy years, but Bob Fosse’s adaptation of a Broadway show based on Fellini’s Nights Of Cabiria is the Blade Runner of musicals. Few loved it when it came out, but three years later (about the time Fosse made

Cabaret) it felt like the most influential movie of its genre ever made. Taxi dancer Charity (Shirley Maclaine) has bad luck with men but retains gamine pep through some of the most exciting, garish, eye-popping song-and-dance numbers ever filmed, all with Fosse’s signature fingersnap/hip-flex choreography. Stand-outs: Maclaine’s kooky ‘If They Could See Me Now’, Sammy Davis Jr’s terrifying ‘The Rhythm Of Life’, and the astonishing ‘The Rich Man’s Frug’.