‘I Am a Camera’ will be released on Blu-ray for the first time thanks to a newly-restored release from STUDIOCANAL as part of their Vintage Classics series.
The risqué comedy drama is based on the 1945 novel ‘The Berlin Stories’ by Christopher Isherwood and the stage adaptation ‘I Am a Camera’. It will be released on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on 23rd May 2022.
‘I Am a Camera’, the play, was later developed by Fred Ebb and John Kander as the classic musical ‘Cabaret’.
Directed by Henry Cornelius (‘Passport to Pimlico’) from a screenplay by John Collier (‘Deception’), ‘I Am a Camera’ stars Laurence Harvey (‘The Manchurian Candidate’) as Christopher Isherwood and Julie Harris (‘The Haunting’) as Sally Bowles.
The cast also includes Shelley Winters (‘The Poseidon Adventure’) and Ron Randell (‘Kiss Me Kate’).
The synopsis for the film is:
Berlin, the 1930s. A young English writer (Laurence Harvey) arrives in the city and takes to sharing a flat with vivacious nightclub singer Sally Bowles (Julie Harris). Together they experience the mad swirl of bohemian life and dream of the successes that will be theirs in the future, but as the Swastika becomes an omnipresent symbol throughout the city, and as their Jewish friends begin to fall victim to Nazi persecution, it becomes apparent that there are dark days ahead.
Upon its original release, ‘I Am a Camera’ received an ‘X’ certificate after being altered after the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) and the Lord Chamberlain’s Office refused to approve it in 1951.
