Posted by anthony on 10/04/07 03:11

Check out this Ebay URL: http://tinyurl.com/2933zu
or Item number: 150167095516

It's for the classic German movie (English subtitles) The Threepenny
Opera. UK buyers please note that although I'm in Australia, I've kept
international shipping price low, and airmail takes only about one
week from here to the UK. This two-disc set is in perfect as-new
condition.

This is the pristine two-disc BFI (British Film Institute) transfer.
Genuine Region Two DVD; not an Asian pirate. Two discs, with both
German and French versions of the movie. Selectable English subtitles.

The Threepenny Opera (Der Dreigroschenoper) is the famous
revolutionary Berlin music-theatre piece from the late 1920s written
by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, and featuring Kurt Weill's wife, the
legendary Lotte Lenya. Transferred to film in 1931 and banned soon
after when the Nazis came to power in Germany. They tried to destroy
negatives and all prints of the movie but this sparkling transfer
proved they could not succeed in destroying this work of genius. The
acerbic, witty score still astounds. And this is the source of the
famous song 'Mack the Knife' made famous by Louis Armstrong and Bobby
Darin -- though it never sounded better than it did here.
It's witty, sexy, savage and comic -- a milestone in film and music
creation.

Set in a shadowy, stylised and dreamlike Victorian London, the story
of Mackie 'The Knife' Messer and Polly Peachum is timeless, and the
combination of Bertolt Brecht's biting social satire and Kurt Weill's
compelling music is as fresh as ever.

Included also, complete on the second disc, is the very rare French
version of the movie. Director G W Pabst used the sets to shoot two
versions of the movie simultaneously, with one German and one French
cast, to capture two markets for the movie. While the German version
is of course definitive, the French version is very different and very
appealing with a lighter, more romantic character to it.

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