Maybe I should rethink my idea of putting on movies when I go to bed. With LOTR I am usually out within a few scenes. I watched the entire movie from bed, propping myself up on my left elbow until I knew I was doing the opposite of falling asleep and finally just sat up.
When I first bought The 3 Penny Opera I was rather disappointed. I didn't think it was anything spectacular. The acting is fine but obviously in the older style. I love old movies but I think they can be kind of hokey. I think the fact that the dialogue doesn't flow turned me off. And the singing is good but at the end I wasn't like, "wow, Kurt Weill wrote some real humdingers!" (I wasn't sure if that was an actual word. Good job, Cranium) Maybe I was expecting Rodgers and Hammerstein, like Into the Woods, one of my favorite musicals.
But watching it again changed my mind. One of the main things that bothered me the first time was how quickly Peachum changes his mind about his daughter's marriage / elopement with Mackie Messer when he simply learns that suddenly Mackie had become a "respectable" man by buying a bank. He was a criminal yesterday, the only thing that's changed is that his wife, your daughter, bought him a bank and made him director. This time I realized that Pabst was making a statement. The entire movie is social commentary. "Duh," I thought, "It doesn't have to make actual sense."
One thing that still bothers me is how much of a philanderer and a jerk the main character is. In one of the songs, Liebeslied ("love song" - to musicians, I am not sure how Kreisler's piece is interpreted as "love's sorrow" though of course it's a fitting title.) Mackie Messer sings to Polly that it doesn't matter that it's not a traditional wedding (they steal her wedding dress and force a vicar to marry them) "Love lasts forever, Or else not at all, No matter where we are." Cute, right? Later in the film he goes to a brothel on Turnbridge Street to visit the girls and his former lover, Jenny. Literally the scene before, Polly asks of him "And don't go to those ladies in Turnbridge."
After Mackie gets out of jail Polly asks him, "Were you faithful to me too?" He evades the question by saying she's looking good and he's pleased with her, and "Have you seen the mail yet?"
I know he's supposed to be an anti-hero but I would have preferred if he had been a criminal (he's portrayed sympathetically, though coolly, as a gentleman thief) with a good, caring heart who deserves the good fortune and legitimate business (that his wife obtains for him) at the end. To use literary terms, his character doesn't seem to be a dynamic one. I wish he was a better man at the end than at the start, preferably (though cliche) through the power of love. I really want to put that in quotations.
The commentary on the film and its production is really informative. It talks about the statements that the men tried to make through the juxtaposition between upper and lower classes. Brecht's equation of the middle class with criminals and especially his revised ending of Mackie, Tiger Brown, and Peachum all going into business together shows his philosophy.
The fact that they buy a bank in particular is hilarious. Two statements are made, one after the other, directly juxtaposed: "One can rob a bank or one can use a bank to rob others," and “One can rob a bank or tread the path of a respectable and law-abiding business."
One of the chief characteristics of the film is that it incorporated cabaret and vaudeville. Brecht, Pabst, and Weill intentionally evoke a sense of the theater through the songs and occasional commentary from the narrator.
"Brecht and Weill always wanted to remind people that they were in the theater. This isn't real life. This is anti-naturalistic, anti-realistic. And therefore when a song would start the placard would come in with the title or the lyrics, the lights would change, the singer would step downstage, and, you know there would be a real sense that something new was starting now. And therefore, I think the vocal style was also a way to distance the audience (some German word = to make something familiar seem strange). So it's the idea that a character breaking into song, in Rodgers and Hammerstein in the '40s, the idea was to move imperceptibly from dialogue to song, in the 3 Penny Opera you want as much break between them in terms of style and presentation as possible."
- from the commentary "Brecht vs. Pabst."
And although the songs interrupt the flow of the movie, it was pointed out that it was typical of Brecht to use the poetry / lyrics as central pillars, with narrative in between. I still don't understand how "Pirate Jenny" fits in. The song is about a pirate who is happy that her ship has arrived, besieging the town she was staying in and eventually killing everyone, taking her away. That said it is a pretty good song. It's up there with Mack the Knife and the Cannon Song. (cool, the commentary clears this up. Apparently the song is originally sung by Polly, not Jenny, in a different scene which is cut from the film.)
The more I understand about this movie the more I fall in love with it. Through watching it again with an open mind I have not only seen the themes of class warfare and exploitation of the poor by capitalism, but I have also learned a great deal about style in early German cinema and how Pabst translated the stage production, itself a translation of John Gay's original Beggar's Opera.
Although I wish more of Weill's music had made it into the movie, it is an excellent, thought-provoking film.
-Austin
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