"Die 3 Groschen-Oper" or "The 3 Penny Opera" is a German movie from 1931, so 85 years old now, that is obviously still in black-and-white, but has sound already. And that is also the crucial thing as this film lives a lot through its music. Director is Georg Wilhelm Pabst, writer is Bertolt Brecht and composer is Kurt Weill. All three of them are still known today, at least here in Germany because of their many contributions to art and the latter was also the husband of Lotte Lenya who plays one of the major characters in here. It is interesting to see her at a younger age because so far I have only come across her as an enemy to James Bond in her probably career-defining villain performance as Rosa Klebb.The rest of the cast I have to say I am not familiar with unfortunately although many of them were prolific back then in terms of acting. And I also was not too impressed by what they did here. To me it seemed as if the story is not suited for a movie that crosses the 110-minute mark. It dragged a lot I have to say and I'd have preferred to run this one for 90 minutes max, which also would have been the usual runtime back around that era. Films weren't that long really often. The music is still the best thing about the film I guess, especially the theme song about "Mack the Knife". I knew this one already before watching the film and it certainly stayed in mind. Such a catchy tune. However, 2 or 3 good songs cannot make up for all the boredom I felt throughout watching this drama. I never was at the edge of my seat, so I did not feel this was a dramatic watch at all. Cannot recommend. Thumbs down.

G.W. Pabst's version of 'The 3penny Opera' is simply sublime with a formidable casting and a magnificent cast with: Ernst Busch as a street singer, Carola Neher, who died in a soviet prison, as Polly and Lotte Lenya as Jenny. The mass scenes (without the help of computer games) are nothing less than masterful. But, above all are the texts of Bertolt Brecht and the magical songs by Kurt Weill; just delicious stuff.This eternal masterpiece doesn't paint a rosy picture of human affairs, with a city (pars pro toto – the world) in the hands of people with shark teeth, venal civil servants and a corrupt police force. Bertolt Brecht formulates in simple words the rules of the game, the basics of human society: first grub, then morals. If the primary conditions for human survival (food, safety) are not available, then there is absolutely no ground for any kind of morality. For Bertolt Brecht, in a 'free for all' society the poor, the vast majority of the population, can only survive by (organized) begging and stealing, by dirty works ('Missetat'). After fighting one another, the crime bosses find a far better solution for the consolidation of their power. They make a super deal, pool their resources and create a financial syndicate of criminals, in other words, a bank, with the former corrupt police chief as CEO. What an awesome prophetic idea! With brilliant theatrical histrionics and a perfect 'London' atmosphere, G.W. Pabst shot an ageless movie masterpiece based on an everlasting opera. A must see.

I've just seen the restored 2006 German print, and while I found it entertaining, it's almost as long as the stage musical. The film medium can't support this, and after about the first half hour, it becomes claustrophobic and momentum-less, and a great disappointment. I had to fight the urge to pick up the clicker and press fast-forward. Part of the problem seems to me that the screenplay adapter or adapters didn't trust Brecht and Weill's theatrical instincts sufficiently: they left out half the songs (though the sound is remarkably good for 1931) and reordered the ones that were left. Most problematically, they rewrote the ending, with this nonsense of Polly and the gang taking over a bank. No march to the scaffold, no "Ballad of Sexual Dependency", no last-minute pardon from the King...Many reviewers here seem to take the London location too seriously. That's just a relic of the John Gay original (The Beggar's Opera): it is most clearly meant to be a satire on Weimar Republic Germany. That's why the Nazis banned it. The real corruption is in the official institutions of power, not in the relatively benign underworld (which reappears in very similar shape and form in Fritz Lange's "M".) Those who don't know Brecht's translations of Gay's original names and texts should learn that MacHeath becomes 'Mackie Messer' (messer mean 'knife' in German, thus 'Mack the Knife'.)The best thing about the film, is probably the documentary record it contains of just how the original audiences would have seen the story, and how the original performers would have rendered the songs. I particularly liked the Moritaet-Saenger and his incredible trilled "Rs" in the opening scene.

Hard-biting cynicism of governments, crooks, the bourgeoisie, misanthropy, and corruption is as stingingly appropriate today as it was in 1931. The leads are well cast and well executed as gangster Mack the Knife and his bride don't care whose feathers they ruffle. However, both take a backseat to Lotte Lenya's unforgettable portrayal of Pirate Jenny which has stood for 70+ years at finest revenge-dream sequence ever filmed.Eerily, one of the sycophantic government stooges is a dead-ringer for Donald Rumsfeld. The incomparable Weill score is reason enough to watch this richly textured, ahead-of-its-time operetta. One thing -- this would be a great candidate for restoration because the copy aired on the PBS stations (where I've seen it twice) is frayed so badly that some sequences are very tough to see. Nevertheless, if you're a student of mankind, Die Dreigroschenoper is one you will not wish to miss!