The Beggar's Opera [DVD]

This is a curiosity - because of the cast, because of its age, and because of its director - and would be quite easy to dismiss as a creaking piece of cinematography; however, dig deeper, and you see the young Peter Brook directing a film, with a wonderful foretaste of his groupings, his landscapes, and his intelligence, all to be come apparent in his later stage and, to a certain extent, film work; his landmark stage production of The Marat Sade comes to mind in the groupings of the beggars in the inns, and the sparcity of the landscapes, viz. the hanging, conjures up his minimalist Dream at the RSC in the 70s. Perhaps to watch Olivier as Macheath will be the main reason for people buying this DVD, and they will not be disappointed - what a handsome man Sir Larry was at the start of the '50s - and his singing voice is passable too, although some of the other cast members are dubbed when singing; the beautiful Dorothy Tutin shines as she always did whether on screen or stage, and Stanley Holloway and Athene Seyler make OTT cameo appearances; don't blink and you will see a very young Kenneth Williams as a pot boy in the inn! All Gay's music is there too - well more or less - and for the ridiculously cheap price this is certainly a collector's item, and well worth buying and watching - probably for Brook's blossoming directorial talents starting to establish themselves.

When this movie opened it scarcely caused a ripple in Britain and even less so in the U.S. I don't know why. It's a telling of John Gay's great work written in 1728, and the play was a blockbuster 280 years ago. It's supposed to be the first English "opera" that told a story through song and which was aimed to entertain the people. Gay took melodies wherever he found them, wrote lyrics to them to advance the storyline, and had a hit. And in another version, it still is. The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht (with Blitzstein's redone lyrics) is a fixture in theaters, and Mack the Knife is still a popular song.

Lawrence Olivier plays Macheath, a rollicking highwayman with "wives" all over London. He has two in particular, Polly Peachum, the daughter of his fence, and Lucy Lockit, the daughter of his jailer. The story of Macheath's adventures, captures and escapes are all told in song. There are horse riding songs, love songs, gambling songs, longing songs, lustful songs. The story starts in a London prison where Macheath awaits hanging. A beggar just tossed into the prison has written an opera about Macheath. He starts to tell it to the inmates and the movie takes off.

The songs are great fun and the style of the movie is very much the look of 18th century London. You can feel the fleas in the wigs, the lice in the clothes, the sheen of greasy lips, the stink of unwashed bodies.

And there are some sharp lines.

"A miser might as well be satisfied with one guinea as I with one wife."

"Love is a misfortune that can happen even to an indiscreet girl."

"I can tell by your kiss that your gin is excellent."

And when pointing out that consummation needn't wait for marriage, "Friends should not insist on ceremony."

Olivier does a masterful job, handling his own stunts, horse work and, most bravely, his own singing. He's good. On the day of Macheath's hanging, he's carted out to the gallows, sitting jauntily on his casket. While a grim-faced preacher is screaming at him to repent, he's sweeping up wenches to kiss, downing tankards of ale held up to him, and making a little girl laugh while bouncing her on his knee. Olivier plays it with great verve.

And while there's not exactly a reprieve, there is a joyous escape.

If you like quirky films that will probably be forgotten if it weren't for DVD, this one is worth getting.

To anyone with a sense of history this is a work, and a production, which grows better and more fascinating with each re-visit. It is, in effect, the first modern musical, and a major influence on all subsequent examples of the genre. Olivier is great in the role of Macheath: he looks the part, he acts the part, and so far as I'm concerned he sings the part. How well is a highwayman supposed to sing? The direction, if perhaps a little slow, is generally excellent, particularly in the group scenes. There is a splendidly atmospheric evocation of the general grubbiness of C18th London low-life. These settings draw extensively on Hogarth, who was strongly influenced by Gay's smash hit --- and not vice versa, as I read somewhere. Gay was dead, destroyed by Prime Minister Walpole, before Hogarth made his big breakthrough in 1733. Macheath, as Hogarth realised, was a parody of Walpole, the "great man". Stanley Holloway and Athene Seyler were terrific stalwarts on the London stage of the era. Tutin, as Polly, is suitably naive and innocent. The other girls are realistically slatternly, quite unlike the usual Hollywood hookers. Sadly, the dvd quality is pretty poor: the colour and the sound are jarringly uneven. Surely it would be possible to remedy this? But I'm not docking any stars for that reason: this is an affectionate production of a true theatrical survivor, and deserves to be seen by anyone capable of discernment.