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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The music, story, and scenography make this film a winner.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Threepenny Opera / Die Dreigroschenoper / L'Opera de Quat' Sous [VHS] (VHS Tape)
The first time I saw this film was around 1970 in Los Angeles. The same evening I saw "Der blaue Engel" with Marlene Dietrich. For a long time these were my two favorite films. I was very pleased that Amazon has at least acquired "Die Dreigroschen Oper". I was unfamiliar with the French version and with this tape you have the chance to see and compare both French and German versions. They are of course black and white versions and luckily both have English subtitles.This film has always enchanted me, or maybe "haunted" is the right word. I'm not sure whether it is Kurt Weill's music or the story itself. Pabst's gloomy and forbidding scenography remind me of other German classics like "M" and "Metropolis". Whatever the reason, the result is unforgettable! While viewing the film you can ask yourself why this film was forbidden in Hitler's Germany. Was it just because Brecht was a communist, or was its tale of corruption (connections between a common criminal and the chief of police) too much to handle or the fact that they were earlier comrades-in-arms and their final song had a completely unacceptable text? This film is in any case top entertainment.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great musical,
By PygmyTwylyte (Citizen of the world) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Georg W. Pabst - The Threepenny Opera [1931] [DVD] (DVD)
Made in 1931,"Die Dreigroschenopern" shows what you could do with the musical,just a few years before Busby Berkely,Fred Astaire and the like turned it into bland,insipid boredom.
Made just a few years after the stage version,it sounds like very early recordings of the Brecht/Weil stage show.A weird version of London is the background to the adventures of Mack the Knife.Mrs.Peachum and so on. A bonus is the French language version of the film,made simultaneously with the German version.Follow the subtitles to see the similarities and differences between the two different languages.An English-language version was planned but never made.If you wish,buy a CD of the Marc Blitzstein translation into English and compare and contrast. If you're interested in Brecht or Weil or the early history of musicals,watch.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Life is money, food, sex, nothing.",
By
This review is from: Criterion Collection: Threepenny Opera [DVD] [1931] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC] (DVD)
Once a staple of critics' ten best ever lists, neither version of G.W. Pabst's once controversial adaptation of The Threepenny Opera offered on this impressive two-disc set has quite stood the test of time as well as hoped. Shot in different languages and with different casts - fairly commonplace in the early days of sound - they do make an interesting contrast, though. The German version has a harder heart, more severity and the better rendition of Mack the Knife, but the lighter French version has a more charming Mack the Knife (or Mackie the Knifeman as they insist on calling him) in Albert Prejean: it's hard to see Rudolf Forster's German incarnation, more prop than performance, being able to dominate a housewife let alone the London underworld. Fine technique and great production design, but it often feels more of a technical exercise than a real cry from the streets.
Any disappointment in the films are amply compensated for with the great extras on the Criterion Region 1 NTSC DVD, though, including a rather interesting documentary on the doomed lawsuit Brecht launched against Pabst for distorting his work alongside both the French and German versions. Curiously another extra on the differences between the two versions reveals that Brecht was more excited about the casting of the French Polly Peachum (Florelle) than the German one (Carola Neher) because he and Lotte loved her voice. Unfortunately she's not as commanding as she needs to be when taking over the gang, but ain't that always the problem with screen musicals - you either get someone who can sing but can't act or someone who can act but can't sing. (Incidentally, Antonin Artaud turns up as the 'new beggar' in the French version.) The BFI's UK PAL DVD includes both German and French versions of the film but no extras other than liner notes.
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