Summary
In the 1890s, Mackie is the head of a gangster mob whose notorious criminal exploits in
London go unchecked, thanks to the complicity of his police chief friend, Tiger Brown.
Mackie’s fortunes appear to take a turn for a worse when he chooses to marry Polly, the
daughter of the unscrupulous Mr Peachum, who runs a society to help beggars. Resenting
the marriage, Peachum confronts Tiger Brown and insists that unless he arrests Mackie,
he will direct his beggars to hold a mass demonstration on the day of the Queen’s coronation.
Torn between his loyalty to his friend and the obligations of his post, Tiger Brown finally
manages to arrest Mackie with the help of the crook’s former mistress, Jenny. Can
this be the end for London’s most wanted man?
Review
In 1928, Bertolt Brecht et Kurt Weill worked on one of their most successful collaborations,
Die Dreigroschenoper, a stage play based on John Gay’s 1728 satire, The Beggar’s
Opera. The success of the play soon led to a film adaptation by W.G. Pabst,
then one of Germany’s most prominent directors. Three versions of the film were
planned - one in English, one in German, and one in French. The English version
was abandoned at an early stage, and the German and French versions were made in parallel,
with two separate casts. The German version, Die Dreigroschenoper, is the
one which is most widely available. L’Opéra de quat' sous was the name
given to the French version.
Considered for many years as a masterpiece, the film has lost some of its impact, mainly
because its overt political messages no longer have the force they once had. With
its artificial, obviously stagey sets and morose songs, the film now appears more of an
oddity than a monumental work of cinema. The film’s strength now lies in its intense
atmosphere, the way it conjures up a world ravaged by underground vice, cynical exploiters
of people’s misfortune, of poverty and corruption.
The sombre tone of the film jars somewhat with its liberal use of comedy, although some
of the visual jokes are still exceedingly funny. It is interesting to note that
Pabst gave the film a slightly different ending to that of the original play, to make
a veiled assault on the financial corruption which was becoming apparent in Germany at
the time.
W.G. Pabst is recognised as one of the great German expressionist directors, and the expressionist
style is apparent in the intimidating, shadowy sets and the dehumanised crowd scenes.
This, together with the film’s subject matter, makes the film an obvious forerunner of
the film noir genre which would emerge across the Atlantic in the following decade.
Bizarrely, the song which opens and closes the film, Moriat became a pop music
hit in 1959 as Mack the Knife, sung by Bobby Darin.
© James Travers 2002
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