Despite the ideological, artistic, and legal disputes which confused and nearly stopped the making of the film version of Bertolt Brecht's Die Dreigroschenoper, the movie is a brilliant success. It was Brecht himself who nearly ruined the film, for between 1928, when he wrote the play, and 1931, when G. W. Pabst commissioned him to work on the film script, Brecht's interest in Marxism had become a strong conviction, and he wanted the film turned into an anti-capitalist diatribe.

Although Pabst accepted most of the plot revisions upon which Brecht insisted, Brecht quite rightly felt that the movie served to undercut rather than to preach the propaganda, and he sued for an injunction to stop the film from being released. He lost the suit, was paid handsomely for the film rights, and divorced himself from the production (after being assured that most of his plot revisions would be used and that all film rights would revert to him after two years). Kurt Weill won his half of the suit, and was allowed to rewrite his score for the movie, in spite of which fact about half of his songs are missing. (The conflict was ultimately settled by the Nazis, who destroyed every print they could get their hands on; and until the recent discovery of a complete negative, the film has been unavailable.)

Brecht's most basic plot revisions are of the end of the movie. The gallows scene and reprieve are cut, and instead Mack the Knife escapes from jail and becomes the head of a prominent banking house which Polly has bought for him. He takes as partners Polly's father, old Peachum, the organizer of London's beggars, and Tiger Brown, who has been deposed as London's police chief. Both of these old criminals have been stripped of their respectability by an enormous demonstration put on by thousands of crippled beggars during Queen Victoria's coronation parade. At the end of the film, the three criminals join forces to exploit the hungry masses, and the film's last shot is of a straggling mob of cripples disappearing into the darkness.

In spite of this compliance with Brecht's wishes, his objections to the movie were well founded. The idea which shapes Pabst's direction is not a condemnation of capitalism, but rather the dehumanization which accompanies the acceptance of any social values. The first character to under-go embourgeoisement is Polly. When she first falls in love with Macheath, she is the epitome of innocence; when she is about to sleep with Macheath for the first time, she runs up the hotel stairs like a kitten chasing a ball of yarn; and when she sings her song about the circumstances under which a girl should "lie down," her face is soft and pale, like a child's. But as soon as she has to take charge of Mack's gang, her clothes and manner become those of the archtypical business woman, and her face appears on the screen in a new and harsher light. She finds herself trapped in her new role when Mack returns from jail to the new bank that she has bought for him and refuses to make love to her: "When I look at you," she whispers, "I see only your mouth." "How much money do we have?" replies her Mackie.

The movie is full of inconsistencies. Jenny, the prostitute who turns Mack over to the police, is never really a part of the story, and was kept only because of the exigencies of the plot, a spark of loyalty to the original version, and Lotte Lenya's availability. And Lenya sings her one song with such grace and pathos that she steals the movie.

Despite the minor confusions--apparently misplaced bits of dialogue and characters who don't make much sense--Pabst's brilliant direction makes the movie coherent and powerful. The actors seem inescapably trapped by their surroundings. They are often seen, especially at important moments, behind paneled windows or rows of shelves or actual prison bars, and the buildings seem to hover over and enclose them. In one of the most brilliant scenes, when Queen Victoria is confronted by hordes of screaming beggars, she stares, horrified and uncomprehendingly at them, and then raises her bouquet of roses to her face to cut off the sight of them.

Rudolf Forster plays Macheath with perfect self-satiric detachment and ingratiating charm, and Carola Neher manages Polly's changing character very subtly. Despite my regrets about the movie's confusion both in purpose and details, I found it delightful. It captures the bitter, ironic, and warm humor of the original.