jrschulz-1
It is hard to be subjective about a film when the academy award winning editor, Jean (Hans) Oser, was a former of professor of mine when taking film classes some 40 years ago at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus. Jean spent some 40 hours discussing this film in great detail I will address this film strictly for the technical expertise. It is a seamlessly edited film that flows in a way that audience is fully informed as to the direction it takes. Although not superbly acted, the direction keeps the film flowing in a well calculated and orderly manner.Whether or not the film is worthy of viewing for content, that I will leave to the viewer. I was mesmerized but it is a biased comment because I was equally mesmerized by the talks of a major part of the production team.
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."
Daniel Hayes
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
jan onderwater
This adaptation of Brecht/Weill's Musikspiel is considered by many a classic masterpiece. Classic it may be (and as such historically important), but a masterpiece it is not. I am not interested in the changes vis-a vis the play: recent research has found out that most changes were already proposed by Brecht himself and other research has found out that Brecht was not the writer at all, but Elisabeth Hauptmann. Nor am I interested in the fact that Weill's music is reduced and that not all songs are performed, which was unavoidable.The point is that although there was real potential for a masterpiece (set designer, cast, director, cameraman etc.), Pabst never succeeds in making this adaptation into a real filmic adaptation. Scenes are presented in order, but never there is a feeling of a close and tightly held drama; the film is more or less subdivided. This may have been on purpose (considering the structure of the play), but for me it just does not work as film. It seems if no real choice was made between a documentation of the play or a truly filmic adaptation; what we are left with is something that lies in between, and that never comes alive. Are we seeing the result of all the (judicial) troubles director and writers had with Brecht and Weill? Or were the makers just too involved in making a masterpiece?So, is this a mediocre or even bad picture? Certainly not. Individual scenes are fine due to sets and cast and the way in which Wagner and Pabst know how to use them (no room here to analyze this). But, on the other hand: do we really see or feel a menacing threat from the army of beggars? Do we really need Ernst Busch as the street singer?; do his scenes really add something? And are most songs not just registered as if they were performed on a stage? And is the editing not just adequate?Today was my 5th or 6th viewing. I still cannot see why this film ever could be acclaimed a masterpiece.
