L'opéra de quat'sous

Great musicals always have great people working at every different level in a united way. The script, the songs, the actors, the camera-movements all must stand on their own while contributing to the musical proper. We have classic cases of this where all those involved went their separate ways and were never able to recreate that magic. Instead of this somewhat accidental result, we have here a carefully calculated masterpiece. It was recognised that this was an important social work, and there were a number of things that needed to happen in its execution. They needed Brecht's (a dramatist becoming increasingly fascinated with cinema) cooperation, they got it. They needed a capable expressionistic director, they got it. They needed creative writers to narrow the work down to a typical film length, they got them. They needed strong powerful actors to circumvent any possible lingering sentimentality, they got them as well. This was an age where film was becoming run by the studios, but in creative ways striving to create great art, and we have stunning works like this to prove it.

5 out of 5 - Essential

In London, the rascal Mackie Messer (Rudolf Forster) is the king of the thieves and an irresistible pimp. When he meets Polly Peachum (Valeska Gert) on the street, he invites her for a drink and they marry with each other in the end of the night in a warehouse. When Polly's father Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (Fritz Rasp) a.k.a. the king of the beggars learns about the marriage of his daughter, he presses the chief of police Jackie "Tiger" Brown (Reinhold Schünzel) to arrest his friend Mackie; otherwise he will send a great number of beggars to protest in the coronation of the queen.

"Die 3 Groschen-Oper" is a cynical musical with low-life characters in the underground of London written by Bertold Brecht and directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. This film was released in Berlin on 19 February 1931 and I saw a DVD with a matrix that was restored in 2006 for the 75th anniversary of this film. In 1986, the Brazilian composer Chico Buarque de Holanda and the director Ruy Guerra released an adaptation of this musical with the successful "Ópera do Malandro", the most expensive Brazilian production until 1986, but without the credit to Bertold Brecht. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Ópera dos Três Vinténs" ("The Opera of Three Pennies")

Those who acquired a taste for 1920s Berlin in 'Cabaret' ought to see this film inasmuch as it is the real thing. Lotte Lenya (Weill's wife in real life and the actress who played the evil Rosa Kleb in 'From Russia With Love') and Carola Neher (fled Hitler for the Soviet Union then betrayed by communism -- she died in a communist prison camp in 1942) each offer an unforgettable singing performance. Carola Neher's song alone is worth the price of admission -- she outclasses even Dietrich.

In the last few years before Nazi power overtook the German film industry, Kurt Weill's operetta reached the screen in this effective and well-cast version. Notable for including Lotte Lenya (Weill's wife) as Jenny, it is funny, memorable, imaginatively filmed, and despite the language barrier, does justice to the songs enshrined in popular culture such as ‘Mack the Knife'.

A giant of early European talkies, this musical has much to recommend to a viewer looking at it after seven decades. An adaptation with songs of John Gay's ‘The Beggar's Opera', it deals with the underworld of crooks, moneylenders, and cut-throats.

Chief of note in the varied cast are Rudolf Forster as Mackie, Carola Neher as Polly, Fritz Rasp as Peachum, and Ernst Busch as the Street Singer. This movie is one of bitterness and foreboding, and it is excellent.

The movie isn't a filmed version of the stage play and doesn't pretend to be. It moves along at a sometimes creaky, sometimes disjointed pace. And when does it take place? There was no coronation of anybody in Victorian England, and I don't believe they had telephones. But those are quibbles. The thrill of it is the art direction - the expressionistic sets, set decoration and costumes are wonders. All those steep staircases! Those "London" streets! Terrific.

I wonder if some of the disjointed sequences and odd pacing of the movie result from the fact that it's a reconstruction, the original having gone the way of all entartete art in Nazi Germany.