Such a frustrating disappointment

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

I've read the reviews of this film so far with a lot of interest. I found this version of "The Threepenny Opera" to be well worth seeing multiple times. It has a great cast, a complex script and is heroic in some ways while not so heroic in its ending.The sell-out ending, a preposterous twist where Polly, temporarily at the head of her husband Macheath's gang, manages somehow for them to buy a bank; and she, Macheath and her 'king of beggars' father all wind up extolling the virtues of feeding off the poor with said bank is hard to stomach for leftist revolutionaries. We can only assume the production was under pressure while it made this film in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis.I loved it visually. The cast is exceptional. While I've read everyone's comments about Lotte Lenya's 'Pirate Jenny', I adored Carol Neher's lone song even more. In my view, Neher (as Polly) breaking out in song at her wedding reception, when we know nothing about her character thus far, is the highlight of the film.(When we learn what a terrible life she lived after this movie was released one can really appreciate Carola Neher's performance. She must have been an incredible person to work with on a film, particularly during such a time as 1931's Berlin.) Overall, Pabst's 'Threepenny' isn't perfect. Still, I recommend it highly. It should be seen by film fans looking to be floored by early sound-era performances that have been criminally forgotten today.

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.

While I adore foreign films and don't at all mind reading the subtitles, I must say that you lose quite a bit when you watch a musical in another language. So, while I score it with a very respectable 7, someone watching it in their own language would probably like it a lot more and might score it higher. This isn't a criticism--more just a fact about watching most foreign language musicals--particularly one with rather old fashioned styles of songs.If you aren't familiar with Berthold Brecht's "Three Penny Opera", it's a musical set in the worst parts of London and is all about the low-lifes living there at the time of the Coronation (1901). The 'star' is the dangerous Mack the Knife--a cut-throat who has a reputation for the ladies and for his enemies somehow disappearing...for good. However, this toughie makes the mistake of thinking he can marry the daughter of the King of the Beggars--a very powerful foe who has decided that Mack's temerity deserves death. Will Mackie manage to survive or will the King manage to get rid of his new son-in-law? Tune in if you are interested.Apparently the Nazis did not appreciate the play nor the playwright nor the guy who orchestrated the play/film (Kurt Weill). While the film makes the British look pretty bad (considering they all seem to either be cops on the take, pimps, thieves and the like), Brecht was a leftist and these leanings are occasionally obvious in the film (such as when the beggars approach the new queen). As for Weill, he was a Jew--and that alone was reason for the film being banned.As for me, I appreciated the look of the film most of all. Veteran director G. W. Pabst did a nice job at the helm and the film looked very nice--with lovely sets and nice cinematography. The acting was also good, though I am not sure if the thin singing was due to the actors or just primitive sound technology. As for the songs, they are most likely an acquired taste. For me, they seemed too short and lacked the nice harmony of, say a Rogers & Hammerstein musical. This isn't to say the songs are bad--just a style that threw me a little--much of it because it was like a musical with very, very little music. All in all, entertaining and worth seeing.By the way, the character Jennny (Lotte Lenya) was played by the same lady who three decades later played the incredibly scary agent Klebb in "From Russia With Love". Also, Vladimir Sokoloff (a familiar face in Hollywood) played the jailer just before he fled the new Nazi regime.Also, by the way, because I am a history teacher, I was confused a bit by the coronation aspect of the film. They never talked about the King (Edward VII) but talked about the Queen being crowned. This didn't make sense to me, as Alexandra was not their sovereign--just the reigning King's wife. In other words, the person being crowned was Edward, not his Queen.And finally, if you find the Criterion DVD, it has a great special feature--the French language version made simultaneously by Pabst--using a different cast but it's essentially the same film. This may seem strange, but at the time they didn't know how to dub films in multiple languages and even Hollywood was making alternate language versions of its films. A few examples include a Spanish version of "Dracula" (1931) with the exact same sets but Mexican actors. Also, Laurel & Hardy were such huge international stars that Hal Roach Studios made French, German, Italian and Spanish films--with Stan and Ollie phonetically delivering their lines to speakers of that language (as well as some appearances by American supporting actors like James Finlayson).

"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."