Die 3 Groschen-Oper
Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Writer: Béla Balázs, Léo Lania, Ladislaus Vajda
Based on: The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill
Cast: Rudolf Forster, Carola Neher, Reinhold Schünzel, Fritz Rasp, Valeska Gert, Lotte Lenya, Ernst Busch
Seen on: 13.02.2015

Plot:
Mack the Knife (Rudolf Forster) knows what he wants and he takes it any way he can, which is also possible with the help of his old friend Tiger Brown (Reinhold Schünzel), chief of police. Mack decides that he wants to marry Polly (Carola Neher). Polly agrees, but her father Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (Fritz Rasp) knows nothing about it. But Peachum is not to be trifled with. From running the beggar’s guild, he has both money and influence which he both uses to pressure Tiger Brown to finally arrest Mack.

In the description of the film it was mentioned that Brecht himself hated this version of his opera. Generally the Threepenny Opera is a bit of a household brand but I didn’t know much about it before seeing the film. I did recognize some of the music that I didn’t know was from the opera, and I knew that it was about Mack the Knife, but other than that, I was completely fresh to the experience and I can’t understand Brecht’s hatred at all. It was a delightful film.

The 3 Penny Opera is a film about serious topics that should not be taken seriously. The characters are all persiflages of themselves and almost pure stereotypes (in Polly’s case at least it’s at least to her advantage – she’s the hypercompetent business woman who runs her man’s life without him barely noticing), but in the exaggeration there’s a lot of truth to be discovered, about politics and society as much as movie making itself.

And all of that is told with great music (beautifully sung, especially by Ernst Busch, the Street Singer, who was one of the highlights of the film whenever he appeared) and a very nice, cheeky sense of humor.

I think this is the first film with Rudolf Forster I ever saw (that it took me, as an Austrian cinemaphile, this long is probably a crime in itself) and I absolutely know why he was such a big star at the time. At least as Mack, he’s perfect, embodying both the jerky and the attractive parts of the character with equal verve.

I’ll be looking forward to discovering more versions of this opera – thankfully there are enough.

Summarizing: I liked it.