Die 3groschenoper

Brecht and Weill may have sued Pabst over what they considered his manhandling of their musical (the director rewrote Brecht's script and dropped several songs), but the social satire remains thankfully intact. The story itself is preserved: in Victorian London, womanising gentleman thief Mack the Knife joins, through marriage, both the king of the beggars and the chief of police in setting up a bank. If Brecht's anti-capitalist sentiments are muted by Pabst's heavily stylised lyricism, there is no denying either the sheer visual eloquence of the sets and photography or the charismatic power of the performances, most notably, perhaps, Lenya as the whore Jenny.