(Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Germany 1931, 111 min., 35mm nitrate print)
Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Writers: Léo Lania, Ladislao Vajda, Béla Balázs, based on the play Die Dreigroschenoper by
Bertolt Brecht (text) and Kurt Weill (music)
Producer: Seymour Nebenzal
Cinematographer: Fritz Arno Wagner
Art director: Andrej Andrejew
Cast: Rudolf Forster, Carola Neher, Reinhold Schünzel, Fritz Rasp, Valeska Gert, Lotte Lenya,
Hermann Thimig, Ernst Busch, Wladimir Sokoloff
Production companies: Nero-Film AG, Tonbild-Syndicat AG (Tobis), Warner Bros. Pictures
GmbH
Sound, b/w, 112 min.
German language, electronic English subtitles
Print source: Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Vienna, Austria
Referred to by Henri Agel as “the most indefinable of German directors,” G. W. Pabst never
achieved the stature of Fritz Lang or F. W. Murnau, as his career and diverse directorial style
defy easy categorization. Once considered a significant figure in international cinema owing to
his landmark Weimar productions, Pabst’s reputation has suffered as a result of the more
mediocre post-1933 pictures he made in France, Hollywood, and—problematically—Nazi
Germany. Pabst’s artistic blending of social realism, melodrama, and stylized Expressionism, and
his keen insight into feminine psychology, are often overshadowed by a greater interest in his
actresses: Asta Nielsen, Greta Garbo, and Louise Brooks. The initial success and enduring
popularity of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s 1928 satiric stage musical The Threepenny Opera
on which the film is based also played a part. So did Brecht and Weill’s controversial lawsuit
alleging Pabst, though a committed socialist, watered down their anti-capitalist play.
Regardless, Pabst’s film is his most ambitious work, and it stands on its own merits. His
visionary adaptation is not only highly atmospheric, its equation of big capital, power, and
corruption arguably offers a more effective critique of capitalism and contemporary social ills
than Brecht and Weill’s play. Pabst’s compassionate and suggestively realistic rendition of “the
beggar’s march” occupies a special place as one of cinema’s most memorable and acclaimed
moments of social protest.
For many decades, the original negative was believed to have been destroyed sometime after the
Nazis banned the film in 1933. However, this fairly complete nitrate print, received by the
Österreichische Filmmuseum from the Soviet distributor Sovexportfilm in 1966 with little
information as to its provenance, offers compelling evidence to the contrary. It comprises fifteen
different AGFA nitrate stocks, some of which were printed directly from the negative but are
dated no earlier than the late 1930s. Its assemblage might date back to the film’s GDR re-release
in 1948. The last reel contains a textured pattern due to an improper surface treatment of the base
side. Despite fair to moderate warpage, fluctuations in shrinkage (up to 1.25%), many edge
repairs, and 88 splices, the film runs very well through the projector.
Masha Matzke