From the editor and writers of Bright Lights Film Journal
Action! Interviews with Directors from Classical Hollywood to Contemporary Iran
(Anthem Art and Culture), by Gary Morris (Editor), Bert Cardullo (Introduction), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Foreword). London and New York: Anthem Press, 2009.
(Anthem Art and Culture), by Gary Morris (Editor), Bert Cardullo (Introduction), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Foreword). London and New York: Anthem Press, 2009.
"I dare anyone to squeeze between
two covers a more varied, useful and
flat out entertaining sampling of
the personalities that make the
seventh art the liveliest."
— David Hudson, IFC.com
— David Hudson, IFC.com
Weill & Brecht
The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny on DVD
Show us the way to the next pretty boy
Don't know much about history? Well, don't sweat it, because Kurt Weill
and Bertold Brecht didn't either when they decided to set their Weimar-flavored
opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny1
in the good old U.S.A. They knew about the Alaskan gold rush (courtesy
of the Chaplin film), the 1925 Florida hurricane that leveled Pensacola
(you remember that one, don't you?), the electric chair, G-men, and
prize fights, and that was about it. But when genius sets to work, ignorance
is no obstacle. Nine times out of ten, facts just get in the way.
Kultur Video has now released
the 1998 Salzburg Festival production of Mahagonny on DVD. Like
the opera itself, the production starts a little ragged but gathers
strength and confidence after the first act.
Weill's brief overture is wonderfully astringent and dissonant, the
precise opposite of the florid, creamy style of the composer often regarded
as his chief competitor, George Gershwin. 2
Mahagonny opens with an unlikely trio, Leokadja Begbick, Trinity
Moses, and Fatty, three hustlers on the lam from white slavery charges
in Pensacola. They've run out of gas and cash on the way to Alaska,
so it's time for a new scam, "Mahagonny," the city of nets, designed
to catch the unwary.
First to arrive are a group of whores singing (in English) "Show Us the Way
to the Next Whiskey Bar," popularized in the U.S. by The Doors back
in the sixties. They're followed by a group of lumberjacks out to have
a good time, including Jimmy Mahoney, Jacob Schmidt, Pennybank Bill,
and Alaska Wolf Joe. The action here stumbles back and forth, with Jimmy
singing at length but for no discernible reason about his dissatisfaction
with life in general and Mahagonny in particular. Then the city is threatened
by a hurricane, which crushes Pensacola (and the G-men) but miraculously
swerves away from Mahagonny at the last minute.
Much of the first act is simply confusing. Parts of it are funny, if
properly staged, but this production doesn't do much with the material.
Most of the time we simply see a bare stage. Sets, when they do appear,
are scarcely more than functional. However, the orchestra and singers
are all first-rate.
In act two, things come together. Begbick, Trinity, and Fatty improve
Mahagonny's product by concentrating on three classic male pleasures
— gluttonous overeating, commodified sex, and prize fights. Jacob Schmidt
kicks things off by eating himself to death, consuming two whole calves
but gagging on the third. "Give praise to a man who was not afraid to
take things to the limit," sings a bare-chested male chorus, who will
never be mistaken for the Chippendales.3
The proceedings are staged with the traditional Teutonic flair for the
literal, so if sagging bellies, body hair, etc., are not your cup of
tea, you might be better off with My Fair Lady.
It's only fair to point out that during the brothel sequence Weill
and Brecht show a rare glimmer of honest emotion. Despite all the grim
couplings around them, Jimmy and Jenny, one of the whores, sing an ode
to a pair of cranes, dumb birds mating for a brief time without purpose
but achieving a simplicity and grace that poor humans can only hope
to equal. Shedding a tear in a Weill/Brecht production! Now that's radical! 4
After that outburst of sentiment, we're on to the prize fight, where
Alaska Wolf Joe, overestimating his strength, is beaten to death by
Trinity Moses. Poor Jimmy Mahoney is left all alone, 5 and, worst of all, he's run out of money,
violating Mahagonny's one law. Jimmy's trial takes up most of the third
act. Although fun in spots — "Pay five bucks and see the wheels of justice
in motion" — the trial tends to drag and Jimmy's electrocution isn't
a lot of laughs either.6
Brecht wants to make us feel the weight of a human death, but he's just
not up to it.7 Irresponsibility
was his métier, and when he tries to get serious he gets boring instead.
Let's see — a confused first act, a slow third, staging that sometimes
works and sometimes doesn't — I guess this isn't turning into a rave
review. But Weill's music is consistently strong and exciting, and both
singers and orchestra do a first-rate job with a fascinating opera.
And, despite my complaints about the staging, the video work here is
quite effective, despite the fact that it was done in a live performance.
So give Mahagonny a try. We all need a little Weimar in our lives
now and again.
Afterword
A great many films,
many of them made-for-TV movies, 8
have been based on works by Brecht and Weill, but not much has made
it onto video. Most important, but most frustrating, is G.W. Pabst's
1931 version of their most famous work, Die 3groschenoper
(yeah, The Three Penny Opera), available on VHS only. 9
Like many early talkies, this film alternates between stretches of awkward
pantomime and stretches of clumsy dialogue. Although there isn't much
music, what there is is quite good. The film remains a must-see, for
Weill fans at least, thanks to Lotte Lenya's rendition of "Pirate Jenny"
(or, as she sings it, "Seeräuber-Jenny"). Lenya, Weill's sometime wife,
remains the outstanding interpreter of his cabaret songs, although she's
best known today, in the U.S. at least, for her bravura performance
as the reptilian Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love (1964).
A 1990 version of The Three Penny Opera, called Mack the Knife,
starring Raul Julia, which has gotten mixed reviews, is available on
DVD.
Brecht and Weill naturally left Germany as the Nazis came to power and ultimately made their way to Hollywood, although they were no longer working as collaborators. Weill contributed three songs to Fritz Lang's 1938 semi-musical You and Me (ex-cons George Raft and Sylvia Sidney fall in love), available on VHS only. Brecht also worked with Lang, doing the script for Hangmen Also Die (1943), available on both DVD and VHS.
In 1946, Weill collaborated with poet Langston Hughes to create a musical
version of Street Scene, a play by Elmer Rice. A 1995 performance
of Street Scene is now available on DVD,10
as is Marianne Faithfull Sings Kurt Weill,11
a 1997 performance from the Monterey Jazz Festival. There's a very nice
website for Weill here and one for
Brecht here.
Notes
1. What does "Mahagonny" mean? Damn if I know.
2. The son of a cantor, Weill was born in Germany in 1900 and studied with Engelbert Humperdinck (the real one). Weill and Brecht began working together in the 1920s. Their most famous collaboration, of course, is the Three Penny Opera.
3. No, they're members of the Konzertvereinigung Weiner Staatsopernchor.
4. It's also very well done. Kudos to Jerry Hadley and Catherine Malfitano, along with conductor Dennis Russell Davies.
5. Pennybank Bill is still around, but he doesn't provide much support.
6. American executions are regarded in Europe as special proof of our barbarous nature as a people, which is perhaps why the death scene is underplayed. The electric chair was made particularly famous in 1928, two years before the premiere of Mahagonny, when the New York Daily News published a photograph of the electrocution of Ruth Snyder (taken by stealth, naturally). Snyder's career inspired the novel Double Indemnity, which has been filmed several times.
7. Actually, the finale might have worked better if it had been done as an outright anti-American screed. Anything for a theme!
8. Both Brecht and Weill were heroic anti-fascists, and have been a staple on European state TV for decades.
9. A separate French version, known as L'Opéra de quat'sous, made at the same time, may be available in France.
10. Don't confuse the 1995 Street Scene with the 1931 Street Scene, based on Rice's play and directed by King Vidor, also available on DVD.
11. Marianne, who spent quite a bit of time paying court to both Mick Jagger and King Heroin, is certainly qualified to interpret the master of Weimar decadence.
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