''The Threepenny Opera'' (german: Die 3 Groschen-Oper) is a 1931 German

musical film Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve merely as breaks ...

directed by

G. W. Pabst Georg Wilhelm Pabst (25 August 1885 – 29 May 1967) was an Austrian film director and screenwriter. He started as an actor and theater director, before becoming one of the most influential German-language filmmakers during the Weimar Republic. ...

. Produced by

Seymour Nebenzal Seymour Nebenzal (22 July 1899 – 23 September 1961) was an American-born Jewish-German film producer. He produced 46 films between 1927 and 1961. Biography Germany He got into film production through his father Heinrich Nebenzahl (1870– ...

's Nero-Film for Tonbild-Syndikat AG ( Tobis), Berlin and Warner Bros. Pictures GmbH, Berlin, the film is loosely based on the 1928

musical theatre Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movemen ...

success of the same name by

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...

and

Kurt Weill Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fru ...

. As was usual in the early

sound film A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...

era, Pabst also directed a

French language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...

version of the film, ''L'Opéra de quat'sous'', with some variation of plot details (the French title literally translates as "the four penny opera"). A planned English version went unproduced. The two existing versions were released on home video by

The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

. ''The Threepenny Opera'' differs in significant respects from the play and the internal timeline is somewhat vague. The whole of society is presented as corrupt in one form or another. Only some of the songs from the play are used, in a different order.

Plot summary

In 19th century

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, Macheath — known as Mackie Messer ("Mack the Knife") — is a

Soho Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

crime lord A crime boss, also known as a crime lord, Don, gang lord, gang boss, mob boss, kingpin, godfather, crime mentor or criminal mastermind, is a person in charge of a criminal organization. Description A crime boss typically has absolute or nearl ...

whose former lover is Jenny, a prostitute in a brothel on Turnbridge Street. On first meeting Polly Peachum, however, he persuades her to marry him. His gang steals the props required for a mock wedding in a dockside warehouse in the dead of night. The celebration is attended by Jackie “Tiger” Brown, Mackie's old comrade-in-arms from their army days in India who is now Chief of Police and about to oversee a procession through the city for the queen’s coronation. Polly's father, Mr Peachum, who runs a protection racket for the city's beggars, outfitting each with an appropriate costume, is furious at losing his daughter to a rival criminal. Visiting Brown, he denounces Mackie as a murderer and threatens to disrupt the queen's procession with a protest march of beggars if Mackie is not incarcerated. Tipped off by Brown to lie low, Mackie goes to the brothel, where the jealous Jenny betrays his presence to Mrs Peachum and the police. After a dramatic rooftop escape, he is arrested and imprisoned. Meanwhile, Polly, who has been left in charge of the gang, takes over a bank and runs it with Mackie's henchmen. This impresses her parents and causes them to undergo a change of heart. Peachum tries to stop the protest march at the last minute but fails, and the procession escalates into a battle between beggars and police enraging the new queen. Jenny visits the prison and, by distracting the jailer with her feminine wiles, allows Mackie to escape. He makes his way to the bank, where he discovers his new status as director. Peachum and Brown, whose careers are both ruined by the beggar demonstration, also come to the bank and agree to join forces with Mackie. Banking, after all, is a safer and more lucrative form of stealing. In a final shot we see the protesting beggars fading from sight into darkness.

Cast

German-language version

Rudolf Forster Rudolf Forster (30 October 1884 – 25 October 1968) was an Austrian film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films between 1914 and 1968. His autobiography ''Das Spiel, mein Leben'' was published by Propyläen Verlag in 1967. He was born in Gr� ...

as Mackie Messer *

Carola Neher Carola Neher (born Karola Neher; 2 November 1900 – 26 June 1942) was a German actress and singer. Biography Neher was born in Munich in 1900. She started to work as a bank clerk in 1917. In the summer of 1920, she made her debut performance ...

as Polly Peachum *

Reinhold Schünzel Reinhold Schünzel (7 November 1888 – 11 November 1954) was a German actor and director, active in both Germany and the United States. The son of a German father and a Jewish mother, he was born in St. Pauli, the poorest part of Hamburg. Despite ...

as Tiger Brown *

Fritz Rasp Fritz Heinrich Rasp (13 May 1891 – 30 November 1976) was a German film actor who appeared in more than 100 films between 1916 and 1976. His obituary in '' Der Spiegel'' described Rasp as "the German film villain in service, for over 60 years." ...

as Peachum *

Valeska Gert Valeska or Valeška may refer to the following people: Given name * Valeska von Gallwitz (1833–1888), German writer *Valeska Gert (1892–c. 1978), German dancer and cabaret artist *Valeska Menezes (born 1976), Brazilian volleyball player * Val ...

as Mrs Peachum *

Lotte Lenya Lotte Lenya (born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer; 18 October 1898 – 27 November 1981) was an Austrian-American singer, diseuse, and actress, long based in the United States. In the German-speaking and classical music world, she is best ...

as Jenny *

Hermann Thimig Hermann Thimig (3 October 1890 – 7 July 1982) was an Austrian stage and film actor. He appeared in 102 films between 1916 and 1967. Biography Thimig came from a famous family of actors. His father, Hugo Thimig, was an actor, director and ...

as the pastor * Ernst Busch as the street singer *

Vladimir Sokoloff Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sokoloff (russian: Влади́мир Алекса́ндрович Соколо́в; December 26, 1889 – February 15, 1962) was a Russian-American character actor of stage and screen. After studying theatre in Moscow, ...

as jailer * Paul Kemp as member of gang *

Gustav Püttjer Gustav Püttjer (15 May 1886 – 11 August 1959) was a German film actor who appeared in around 150 feature films between 1927 and 1959. He largely played character parts. After the Second World War he settled in East Germany appearing in the fil ...

as member of gang * Oscar Höcker as member of gang * Krafft Raschig as member of gang * Herbert Grünbaum as Filch

Cast notes

and

reprised their roles from the stage production. Neher later died in a

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

in 1942 where she was sent to during the

Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...

French-language version

Florelle Florelle (born Odette Élisa Joséphine Marguerite Rousseau, 9 August 1898 – 28 September 1974) was a French soprano singer and actress. She gained fame as Polly Peachum in the French film ''The Threepenny Opera'', after which she had numero ...

as Polly Peachum * Albert Préjean as Mackie *

Gaston Modot Gaston Modot (31 December 1887 – 20 February 1970) was a French actor. For more than 50 years he performed for the cinema working with a number of great French directors. Biography Modot lived in Montmartre at the beginning of the 20th cen ...

as Peachum *

Margo Lion Margo Allison Lion (October 13, 1944 – January 24, 2020) was a producer for plays and musicals both on Broadway and off-Broadway, known for her role in producing the stage and screen hit '' Hairspray''. Combined, the works Lion produced won 20 ...

as Jenny *

as Smith, jailer * Lucy de Matha as Mrs Peachum *

Jacques Henley Jacques Henley (born Jacques Dhote) was a French actor. Selected filmography * '' Our Masters, the Servants'' (1930) * '' The Mystery of the Villa Rose'' (1930) * ''The Threepenny Opera'' (1931) * '' The Yellow Dog'' (1932) * '' The Regiment's Ch ...

as Tiger Brown *

as parson *

Antonin Artaud Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (; 4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), was a French writer, poet, dramatist, visual artist, essayist, actor and theatre director. He is widely recognized as a major figure of the E ...

as beggar * Roger Gaillard as beggar * Marie-Antoinette Buzet as whore at Turnbridge

Production

and

, the playwright and composer of the stage play that the film is based on, were originally hired to adapt the play for film, but Brecht quit in the middle of production, while Weill continued working on the film until he was fired. The two each sued Warner Bros. and the German production company on the basis that sale of the rights stipulated that nothing in the stage production could be changed for the film. Brecht and Weill intended the piece as a satire on capitalism, and claimed that the ideological basis of the story was softened by director

, who wanted the film to be more entertaining. Brecht was accused of breach of contract and his suit was rejected, but Weill won his suit. In August 1933, Pabst's film was banned by the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

s, and the negative and all prints that could be located were destroyed. The film was later reconstructed in 1960 by Thomas Brandon with the assistance of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

Songs

Not all the songs from the stage production were used in the film. Songs that were used include " The Ballad of Mackie Messer", "Love Duet", "Barbara Song", "Is It a Lot I'm Asking?", " The Ballad of the Ship with Fifty Cannons", "The Cannon Song", and "Song of the Insufficiency of Human Endeavor".

Release

''The Threepenny Opera'' was the first film presented at Warner Brothers' new foreign-language theater in New York City. The versions of the film released in the United States and the United Kingdom were shorter than the 110 minutes of the original German version.

References

External links

* * * *
''The Threepenny Opera: Doubles and Duplicities''
an essay by

Tony Rayns Antony Rayns (born 1948) is a British writer, commentator, film festival programmer and screenwriter. He wrote for the underground publication ''Cinema Rising'' (its name inspired by Kenneth Anger's '' Scorpio Rising'') before contributing to ...

at the

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Threepenny Opera, The 1931 films 1930s musical drama films German black-and-white films Films based on musicals Films based on works by Bertolt Brecht Films directed by G. W. Pabst Films of the Weimar Republic Films set in London Films set in the 19th century 1930s German-language films German musical drama films German multilingual films Films produced by Seymour Nebenzal German historical musical films 1930s historical musical films Tobis Film films 1931 multilingual films 1931 drama films 1930s German films Films shot at Staaken Studios