Set in a shadowy, dreamlike Victorian Soho, Brecht's biting social satire and Kurt Weill's compelling music tell the story of Mack the Knife and Polly Peachum. A unique opportunity to compare two versions, one French - 'L'Opéra de Quat’ Sous', and one German - 'Die Dreigroschenoper', made back-to-back using the same sets but different casts.
Die Dreigroschenoper(1931)
Pabst’s film of the Brecht-Weil Dreigroschenoper was premiered in Berlin on August 31, 1931, two hundred years after the London opening ... more >
Die Dreigroschenoper(1931)
Pabst’s film of the Brecht-Weil Dreigroschenoper was premiered in Berlin on August 31, 1931, two hundred years after the London opening of John Gay’s Beggars Opera on which it was based.
Brecht in his earlier play retained John Gay’s basic plot but updated it, relating the satirical events to his own time. His concern was more with ideas than with a coherent story line or characters. Pabst in his film treats plot and characters more realistically, less poetically, than Brecht, with greater emphasis on feeling and motivation.
The Brecht/Weil stage production of 1928 had made them both world famous.. It was translated into 18 languages and in five years there were over 10,000 international performances .
I saw the revived New York stage production in 1955, with Lotte Lenya in her original role of Jenny, and it was one of the great theatrical experiences of my life. I remember the satire, the superb songs,the spell that the company wove that kept us on the edge of our seats. This was avant-garde art that refused to compromise, yet it had a unique popular appeal. The film cuts some of the wonderful songs and omits others, but with a similar cast - Carola Neher in the part of Polly and Lotte Lenya as Jenny –is able to share something of the greatness that I witnessed then.
Unlike the stage version and unusually for Pabst, sets, props and lighting are for the most part stylised.The film setting is Victorian London, complete with pimps, prostitutes and dodgy officials. Were the Brits amused in 1931? Were they hell. The Threepenny Opera was immediately banned in England. It was released in Germany on the eve of Hitler’s seizure of power, and captures something of the ominous atmosphere of that time, but the Nazis later destroyed all German prints of the film. So it was banned in England and in Germany in 1933, but for different reasons.
What is most brilliant and innovative in the film is Brecht’s original ending.
In both the Gay and Brecht plays, Macheath is rescued at the eleventh hour from the scaffold. In the film Polly ensures that he becomes president of a bank! Peachum, king of the beggars and Polly’s father, and Tiger Brown, chief of police and a friend of Mackie’s, join him in the bank when they lose their jobs. Brecht appears to be saying: legal daylight robbery is infinitely to be preferred to the illegal variety. It is less dangerous - and a great deal more profitable.
Brecht hated the film, and he and Kurt Weil sued Pabst and Nero film for breach of copyright, trying to halt its production. Why? On the grounds that their stage hit had been damagingly distorted.There is a certain truth to this, as the stage hit was ‘by beggars for beggars,’ whereas Andrej Andrejew’s studio set was the biggest and most elaborate ever built in Germany. However, as so often with Brecht, there is another side to the story. From his own draft, which he later published as Die Beule, it is clear that many of the changes to the original were devised by Brecht himself.! Anyway, he lost his case, on the grounds that he had quit work on the screnplay. The cannier Weil, who had waited until he was fired, was awarded damages.
The film was made in two languages,French and German, and with two different casts, and a complete negative was reconstructed by the exhibitor Thomas Brandon in 1960 after a decade’s search for the missing scenes.
Pabst ranks with Lang and Murnau as one of the great directors in the golden age of German film in the 20’s and 30’s.His masterwork is considered to be Pandora’s Box (1928) which established Louise Brooks as a cinema icon, but he made two other films in 1930-31 which belong with Die Dreiroschenoper –the antiwar Westfront, 1918 (1930) and Kameradeshaft (1931). All three films have elements in common –a Pabstian context –in that they were anti-capitalist, stressing instead the importance of friendship and moral obligation. In contrast to these other two films The Threepenny Opera is romantic and stylised, but it nevertheless belongs alongside them.
