l_rawjalaurence Filmed just before the Nazis came to power, and banned when they did, DIE 3-GROSCHEN OPER is a brilliant version of the Brecht classic.Set in a dystopian London full of dark shadows and concealed streets, director G. W. Pabst foregrounds the musical's satire of corruption. Macheath's (Rudolf Forster's) gang patrol the streets looking for anything to steal, rivaled only by Peachum's (Fritz Rasp's) gang of would-be beggars who become thoroughly proficient at putting on an act so as to screw more money out of the punters. In this stew of corruption concepts such as marriage mean little - although Macheath marries Polly Peachum (Carola Neher), he scarcely remains faithful to her, preferring to keep his regular Thursday date in the local whorehouse with Jenny (Lotte Lenya) in particular. Sentenced to death by hanging, Macheath eventually escapes from prison and joins Peachum in a huge cartel that dominates the center of London.Kurt Weill's music and Brecht's lyrics offer a stinging satire of contemporary life. The tunes might be memorable, but here they are sung with an emotionlessness designed to make viewers reflect on their true meaning. The narrator (Ernst Busch) addresses us direct to camera, not only prompting our responses but warning us about what will happen next. Such techniques are part of the technique known as Verfremdungseffekt, or alienation, designed to prevent us identifying with the characters and thereby forcing us to concentrate on the text's social criticism. Pabst manages this aspect of the film extremely well; by the end we fully understand the implications of living in a rapacious society where only the fittest survive.Having said that, DIE 3 GROSCHEN-OPER is also a very funny film. There is one particularly memorable set piece taking place in an isolated warehouse where Macheath and Polly are due to be married by a timorous Reverend (Hermann Thimig) who is looking for any excuse to escape at the earliest possible opportunity. The fact that he cannot do so attests to the strength of Macheath's gang.Brilliantly restored in the early 2000s, Pabst's film combines early sound techniques and a clever management of space to produce an acknowledged classic, as timely today as it was when it first appeared over eight decades ago.

lreynaert G.W. Pabst's version of 'The 3penny Opera' is simply sublime with a formidable casting and a magnificent cast with: Ernst Busch as a street singer, Carola Neher, who died in a soviet prison, as Polly and Lotte Lenya as Jenny. The mass scenes (without the help of computer games) are nothing less than masterful. But, above all are the texts of Bertolt Brecht and the magical songs by Kurt Weill; just delicious stuff.This eternal masterpiece doesn't paint a rosy picture of human affairs, with a city (pars pro toto – the world) in the hands of people with shark teeth, venal civil servants and a corrupt police force. Bertolt Brecht formulates in simple words the rules of the game, the basics of human society: first grub, then morals. If the primary conditions for human survival (food, safety) are not available, then there is absolutely no ground for any kind of morality. For Bertolt Brecht, in a 'free for all' society the poor, the vast majority of the population, can only survive by (organized) begging and stealing, by dirty works ('Missetat'). After fighting one another, the crime bosses find a far better solution for the consolidation of their power. They make a super deal, pool their resources and create a financial syndicate of criminals, in other words, a bank, with the former corrupt police chief as CEO. What an awesome prophetic idea! With brilliant theatrical histrionics and a perfect 'London' atmosphere, G.W. Pabst shot an ageless movie masterpiece based on an everlasting opera. A must see.

kidboots When the play was originally staged, the heroine, Polly Peachum was just too mild and the hero, Mr. Peachum too old and crotchety and besides MacHeath and Jenny Diver had become larger than life characters. Originally Jenny Diver was just one of MacHeath's many girls but because of her powerful voice was given 2 duets to sing with Mack the Knife - "The Procurer's Ballad" and "What Keeps a Man Alive". She was also given "Pirate Jenny", a song originally written for Polly Peachum. It was an over the top fantasy about a kitchen maid who becomes captain of a pirate ship and decides which prisoners to kill - "All of them"!!! It was no surprise that the role of Jenny was assigned to Kurt Weill's wife Lotte Lenya.Unfortunately, the only song Lotte got to sing in the movie was a not very inspired version of "Pirate Jenny" - critics raved about her raspy, powerful voice but here she sang very sweetly!! Even though Pabst's film differed much from the play it still retained it's social satire and challenged conventional ideas of proprietary - "Who is the greater criminal - he who robs a bank or he who founds one"!!! While the play was set in an imaginary 19th century London, Pabst, who was the master of screen realism, decided to reverse his approach and built up a fantastical universe, greatly enhanced by Andrej Andrejew's moody settings. The brothel scene is particularly effective with it's many useless ornaments and it's over powering statues. The commentator is a balladeer who appears at regular intervals with songs that make the narrative flow - everything adds to the dreamlike atmosphere. Brecht and Weill sold the movie rights with the strict instructions that nothing must be changed - they sued Warners and Nero and won. The reason - most of the songs were omitted and Lotte Lenya, instead of being one of the stars was really now only a featured player."Mack the Knife" tells you all you need to know about the mysterious McHeath - always on the scene when murders, robberies and rapes are committed but is never questioned, thanks to his very close friendship with the Chief of Police aka "Tiger" Brown. He is about to be married to Polly Peachum (Carola Neher) and the setting is eerie, a thieve's den down by the docks, full of stolen bric-a-brac, a candleabra, grandfather clock, tapestries, kingly chairs, sumptuous food (lots of bananas!!). Polly sings the evocative "No" showing why fine up standing gentlemen will always receive a "No" from her.Her father J.J. Peachum (Fritz Rasp) is the King of the London Beggars - and he does a roaring trade, for 50% of their takings he coaches the poor in the gentle art of begging and shows them the different ways to get a gentleman to part with their money!! When he realises that his Polly has joined forces with Mack the Knife he threatens the police that if Mackie is not caught and hanged he will ruin the coming coronation by turning all the London beggars loose among the festivities. Mackie gets wind of the plan and flees, leaving Polly in charge, who then uses all the know how she learned from her father to turn MacHeath's business legitimate. Instead of robbing banks, they now own a bank and Polly is a hard taskmaster, threatening to sack anyone who doesn't give 100%. With Mackie now a bank president and Polly now a part of the coronation her father is finding it almost impossible to stop his plans for a beggar uprising!!!Of the few songs left in the score, they are all highlights including the duet between Mackie and "Tiger" Brown - "The Cannon Song" as well as "The Ballad of the Easy Life". Carola Neher, who played Polly to perfection had a ghastly life. An outspoken anti fascist, she and her husband were captured by the Nazis, her little son taken from her and she later died of typhoid in a concentration camp.

Terrell-4 "You gents who to a virtuous life would lead us, and turn us from all wrongdoing and sin...first of all see to it that you feed us, then start your preaching. That's where to begin..." Bertolt Brecht was a hard-nosed socialist, an unpleasant and selfish gent who often took others' ideas and transformed them into something uniquely forceful and original. He believed that the proletariat struggle against the bourgeoisie was unending. When he and the composer Kurt Weill, equally original and talented in Weimar Germany, but who was not nearly so politically rigid or so personally obnoxious, collaborated on Die Dreigoschenoper in 1928, it probably flabbergasted them both to have a huge popular success on their hands. Much of the reason is Weill's clever, pungent score, but a lot of the credit goes to Brecht's utter cynicism about how the privileged behave to the workers. Says one of Threepenny's characters, "The rich of this world have no qualms about causing misery but can't stand the sight of it." The movie G. W. Pabst made from the theater production eliminates great junks of Weill's music. One would think this would be a terrible mistake. What we have, however, is a movie of social criticism that is so cynical with such self-serving characters that the songs Pabst kept seem to lift an already excellent film into greatness. We're seeing the story of Mackie Messer (Rudolf Forster), a man as charming as a snake. He's a murderer, a rapist, an arsonist, a thief...all tools of his trade. Mackie in his tight suit, grey bowler hat and with his ivory cigar holder preys on others. We learn all about Mackie when a street singer (Ernst Busch) entertains the crowd with stories of his crimes. When Mackie "marries" Polly Peachum (Carola Neher), however, he encounters the wrath of Mr. Peachum (Fritz Rasp), London's king of the beggars. Soon Mackie's great pal, Tiger Brown (Reinhold Schunzel), London's chief of police, cannot protect Mackie when Peachum threatens to unleash all his beggars during Queen Victoria's coronation celebrations. Eventually, Mackie is betrayed and cast into jail, soon to be hanged. But the Threepenny Opera insists on a happy ending, just as in the movies. Polly has shown herself to be a great captain of thieves while Mackie was jailed. Tiger Brown, while dismissed as police chief has nonetheless rescued a great deal of money. Mr. Peachum's wily ways come into play. And Mackie sees no great issues that threats and money can't solve. They all agree that instead of robbing others illegally, why not start a bank so they can rob everyone legally? And with this happy end, we all are satisfied. Pabst has created a wonderful visual sense of the time and place in Victorian Soho. There's a lot of shadowy lighting that underscores the rotten society that Brecht and Weill are serving us with such style. The songs that were kept in the movie catch us up in amused cynicism ("Mack the Knife"), the cynicism for naive love ("The Wedding Song for Poor People"), the cynicism of realistic love ("Polly's Song"), the rousing cynicism of the military ("Cannon Song") and, powerfully, the cynicism of resentment ("Pirate Jenny"). Lotte Lenya, Weill's wife, who plays the maid in Mackie's favorite brothel and has been one of Mackie's many conquests, sings this with such intensity and, at the end, cheerfulness, it will curl your toes. The warehouse where Mackie "marries" Polly has been made into a mansion of luxury and love that's as phony as lipstick on a pig. The bankers and police officers are the epitome of rectitude and are as hypocritical as many a mortgage lender's handshake. Barely underneath this surface of mutual use bubbles the corruption, as Weill and Brecht would have it, of the rich, the powerful and the complacent. It doesn't take much to remember the paintings of George Grosz, with all those fat, greasy-lipped bankers, wearing nothing but underwear and top hats, lolling in the arms of sweating, fat prostitutes. The Marc Blitzstein translation of The Threepenny Opera (1954 New York Cast) (Blitzstein Adaptation) that became a huge hit on Broadway in 1954 may have softened the edges a bit of Brecht's class war, but Weill's music and Brecht's lyrics (as translated by Blitzstein) still give one of the best ideas of how effective the score and the stage production continue to be. Pabst's movie of The Threepenny Opera, in my opinion, rates the over-used term of being a classic. I'd also recommend getting the wonderful Technicolor film version of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, with Lawrence Olivier playing MacHeath. It was John Gay, after all, who started all this. Let's let Brecht and Weill have the last words... "How does a man survive? By daily cheating, mistreating, beating others, spitting in their face. Only the man survives who's able to forget that he's a member of the human race."