Dirk-35

The fact that most of the budget for this presumably went on the heavy-duty cast list shouldn't have mattered if it had been staged with flair and imagination and some sympathy for the original's satirical intent. Instead we get risibly bad song and dance sequences featuring picturesque beggars and whores, and the final alienation is accomplished by pulling back to reveal the action has taken place on a music-hall stage, appropriately enough for a production that's more Lionel 'Oliver' Blair than Brecht. The acting talent is shamefully misused: Migenes and Walters are good but don't have to try very hard: Migenes at least has a great voice and some feel for the material. Julia looks perfect as Mack, but struggles with the character, straitjacketed by a fake plummy accent. Harris's Peachum is embarrassingly mannered and Polly is atrocious. The adaptations of lyrics, script and music are often awkward: it was a bad move to base the film on Marc Blitzstein's bowdlerised Broadway version, but at least his words were singable, unlike most of what's been interpolated in gestures of faithfulness. And the attempt at overcoming the low budget by filming at claustrophobic angles on mist-shrouded sets lit in garish blues and oranges as if by some bargain-basement Vittorio Storaro fails utterly -- the film just looks cheap, shoddy and thoughtlessly made. Disgraceful.

An odd and intriguing early work if you've seen this maverick German director's later films. On one level it has shares with the French new wave tradition the spontaneity that comes from shooting cheaply on location and dubbing on dialogue later with little respect for lip-synch; on another level it presents carefully constructed imagery, often of a religious nature, in saturated Super-8 (the hero's progress is presumably intended to be something of a pilgrimage), which looks forward to the works of Jarman. Praunheim's trademark preoccupation with the bizarre diversity of human life is there in his usual array of misfits, queens and transsexuals; but there is also his political edge, presenting the poverty of Calcutta and Glasgow as a crush on the human spirit, trapping its victims into ignorance. A definite oddity.