Blu-ray Movie Reviews

When Showtime airs a lovingly restored and digitally remastered version of Liza with a "Z" on Sunday, April 1 at 10 p.m. ET (the DVD will go on sale three days later), it will be the first time the show has been seen in more than 30 years. Viewers whose memories don't go back quite that far might wonder why anybody would go to the trouble of remixing an old Liza Minnelli TV special in 5.1 Dolby Digital. After all, what with her regular appearances in rehab clinics and her bizarre, short-lived marriage to concert promoter David Gest, Minnelli is essentially a camp icon these days. (She even tacitly acknowledged as much by good-naturedly sending herself up in a recurring role on Arrested Development before Fox shabbily shuttled the show off to oblivion back in February.)

But Liza with a "Z" is no run-of-the-mill TV special. Filmed by The French Connection cinematographer Owen Reizman with eight 16mm cameras and recorded by master pop-music engineer Phil Ramone, it was nothing less than an original concert for television. To viewers accustomed to videotape, Liza with a "Z" was like nothing they had ever seen before.

Filmed before a live audience at New York's Lyceum Theater on May 31, 1972, the special was possible only because the people behind it were at the peak of their powers. Minnelli was starring in the film version of the Broadway smash Cabaret, which would win eight Academy Awards and net her a Best Actress Oscar, a British Film Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and land her on the covers of Time and Newsweek the same week. Liza with a "Z" reunited her with Cabaret director/choreographer Bob Fosse (who would win the Best Director Oscar for the film) and the musical's songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb.

What came out of this unusual combination of talents is a very atypical TV show, less a television experience than the raw record of a theatrical one. Liza with a "Z" has a cinema verité look. Because the show was lit to accommodate a live audience in a Broadway theater, not television viewers, the backgrounds are frequently quite dark, drawing the eye inexorably to Minnelli herself as she belts and prances her way through such numbers as Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man," Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child" and, of course, a medley from Cabaret. Though the restored print is very clean, it has a somewhat harsh look actually helps convey the immediacy of a live stage performance, as does the clear but trebly sound.

Though it won a Peabody Award as well as four Emmys, NBC showed Liza with a "Z" just three times: September 10, 1972; March 9, 1973; and again the following September. After that, the 16mm print went into a vault and went unseen for decades.

In 1999, Minnelli began discussions about restoring the special with Michael Arick, who produced the Director's Cut of Blade Runner and has restored many other movies, including The French Connection and Planet of the Apes. According to Arick, the negative of Liza with a "Z" disappeared sometime in the 1980s. When he eventually turned it up, he found that the 16mm film had been damaged, but that the color image was stable enough to clean and restore. The sound, however, was another matter entirely; the concert had aired with a monaural soundtrack in 1972, and no master of the performance survived. Fortunately, Arick discovered what he describes as "hundreds of tiny sound rolls" among Minnelli's stored materials, and a detailed log by Fosse of everything that had been recorded. In addition, he found that Phil Ramone had recorded most of the music on multiple tracks, making it possible to have a Dolby 5.1 theatrical mix done at Chace Productions in Burbank.

The result of all that work is something far different than the kind of vintage TV variety programming you sometimes stumble across during a PBS pledge month. Minnelli's powerful voice and presence come through clearly as she struts and sweats her way across the stage in colorful costumes by Halston, including a memorable coral microdress. Completely in command of an enthusiastic crowd, she emits the kind of star wattage later generations might associate more with an arena rock star than a Broadway performer. For those who know Minnelli only as Lucille Two on Arrested Development or as the daughter of The Wizard of Oz's Dorothy, Liza with a "Z" will be a revelation. Back then, Minnelli was no camp icon. In 1972, Liza was hot.