The Threepenny Opera (1931 film)

The Threepenny Opera is a 1931 German musical film directed by G. W. Pabst, made from the stage success of the same name by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, which had opened in 1928. Nero-Film, run by the producer Seymour Nebenzal, made it for Tobis and the Berlin branch of Warner Bros. Pictures. As was common in the first years of sound, Pabst shot two versions back to back, a German one and a French one titled L'Opera de quat'sous, with different casts and some changes of plot detail. The story follows the London crime lord Macheath, known as Mackie Messer, his marriage to Polly Peachum and the clash with her father, who runs the city's beggars. The film keeps only some of the play's songs and reorders them, and it presents the whole of society as corrupt in one way or another. Brecht and Weill had been hired to adapt their play, then left or were dismissed, and both sued over the changes. The Nazis banned the film in 1933 and destroyed the negative and the prints they could find, so it was reconstructed in 1960. The two surviving versions were later issued by the Criterion Collection.