Tonight's movie was "The 3 Penny Opera" (1931) on Criterion, ordered and received from the Libe. If you have heard of the title, you may also have seen it written as "The Threepenny Opera". I am using the numerical title as shown on the dvd cover. I ordered the movie from the library system because it was directed by GW Pabst, he of the Weimar Republic era artistic movement that took place before the Nazis came in. Pabst directed "Pandora's Box", which I reviewed a week or two ago. That film was my first exposure to him, and I wanted to see more of his movies. I don't know if I'd call him part of the German Expressionist movement, but he's certainly in the general area of that style. His films - the ones I've seen - use grand sets and theater lighting - and look like plays come to life, and yet they look much larger than filmed plays. They look like real life, if real life was a stage play. The German film industry of the early 1930s, pre-Hitler, must have had studios that were near equal to those in Hollywood, in order to produce a picture of this magnitude, utilising large backlot settings.
The movie opens in a poor section of London, the Soho district. A street performer is regaling passerby with a song. It took me a moment, and then I realised : "Hey wait a minute.....he's singing "Mack The Knife". I only know that song from Bobby Darin. If you are my age, you might have heard it too. I never knew why a big pop singer like Bobby Darin would have recorded a song about a Jack The Ripper type of killer, but he did and it was a big hit. But even more than that, the lyrics were weird, like an "inside story" where You Had To Be There To Understand. The song makes reference to Lottie Lenya, a German singer who we learned about in elementary school (weird the things you remember, eh?), but anyway, in the movie, this street singer was doing "Mack The Knife", and as I recognised the song, I thought, "Oh...so this is where it comes from".
I always figured it was just a Bobby Darin song, written with eccentric lyrics by some pop hitmeister of the late 50s.
I had no idea it was written by Kurt Weill for Bertolt Brecht, or that "The 3 Penny Opera" was a Brecht play. And that is because I really didn't know much about Kurt Weill or Bertolt Brecht, other than that I've heard their names mentioned time and again throughout my life with regards to theater.
I never gave Brecht or Weill a second thought because I just figured they were Not Within My Realm Of Interest. Probably critics' favorites from another century or something.
I sought out the movie, as noted, because of the director GW Pabst, but now having seen it, I see why the team of Brecht and Weill is held in high regard. In "The 3 Penny Opera" they are making a social comment along the same lines as Dickens, only a century later and from a German perspective. Brecht is using the class warfare and poverty of London as his setting, and being a German playwright, his characters speak in German, but the message is the same as Dickens.
In London (and England) in the Victorian era, there was mass manipulation of the poor by mid-level schemers, whilst the wealthy lived in isolation and could in no way relate to the average person's predicament.
I won't go into yet another political tirade, thank goodness!, because we all know enough about that subject for now, but I will suggest that you watch "The 3 Penny Opera" by GW Pabst, in order to see what the artistic culture was like in Germany just two years before the Nazis took over. It was very left wing, and in reading on IMDB about the actors involved in this film, some of them fled the country because they saw what was coming. I point this out to show that there was a great and accomplished artistic community in what was called Weimar Germany that existed before the Nazi era, and their films show an openness and artistic inclusiveness that would be instructive to us even today. Not all Germans were Nazis, and indeed the great German artists of the 20s and early 30s had a social consciousness that we would recognize today. And, they were super talented and made some great movies.
So check out "The 3 Penny Opera", which is not an actual opera but basically a story of crime and police corruption in Victorian London, and how the poor are manipulated by a scheming middleman, who organises them into a political force for his own benefit.
I had heard of Bertolt Brecht. Now I see why he is considered a great writer.
But see the movie because of the GW Pabst directorial style, and see "Pandora's Box" too.
That's all for today. The Santana Winds are back, and we will pray they go away soon, because the Thomas Fire is still burning out of control, and will likely end up being the biggest fire in California history if the winds don't die down soon. So prayers are in order, and thanks to the firefighters.
See you in church in the morning. :):) xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment