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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Film, Gramophone, and National Cinemas: Die Dreigroschenoper and L'Opéra de quat'sous
Text.Serial.Journal
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Thematic issue / Section thématique
2005-10-01
2023-09-21
2005-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Charles O'Brien
2005/10/01
Carleton University
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Film, Gramophone, and National Cinemas: Die Dreigroschenoper and L'Opéra de quat'sous
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5
FILM, GRAMOPHONE, AND NATIONAL CINEMA:
DIE DREIGROSCHENOPER AND L'OPERA DE QUAT'SOUS
Charles O'Brien, Carleton University, Ottawa




   This paper centers on the German- and French-language film adaptations of Die
Dreigroschenoper directed by G. W. Pabst.I The central question concerns how the
numerous gramophone recordings of Dreigroschenoper songs - in both vocal and
instrumental, dance-band versions - informed the production and reception of the two
Pabst-directed films. In framing this question, I will explore the possibility that the
films do not reproduce the play cinematically as much as they reflect upon the play's
rapid commercialization wrought by multiple electric-sound media - including gramo-
phone, radio and film itself. How might an analysis of Pabst's film as a mirror of sorts
for the gramophone-industry's commodification of the Weill-Brecht songs serve to clar-
ify the films' differences from one another, as well as the films' place within their
respective national media cultures?
   The analysis of the films' links to the gramophone recordings will proceed in two
directions. One direction entails surveying differences in musical performance
between Die Dreigroschenoper and L'Opéra de quat' sous. Building on the scholarship
of Roberto Calabretto, who has identified precise musical differences between Pabst's
film(s) and the Weill-Brecht play, my analysis explains such differences relative to the
work of conductor Theo Mackeben, who had led the Lewis Ruth Band's performances
of music for the original Berlin stage production of Die Dreigroschenoper, Pabst's film
adaptations, and certain of the most significant of the Dreigroschenoper gramophone
 recordings. At the same time, in addition to examining how the Brecht-Weill songs
 function within the Pabst films, I outline how they functioned outside the films
 through their distribution via the gramophone, broadcast radio, and live performance.
 The aim overall is to situate both the film and stage versions of Die Dreigroschenoper
 within the media-cultural context that shaped their relations with one another.


 From Stage to Film, Via the Gramophone

   The German film version of Die Dreigroschenoper has long been understood relative
 to the original Brecht-Weill stage production. Such an understanding began to take
 form prior the film's production, in light of the extensive media coverage generated by
 Brecht and Weill's lawsuits against the production company Nero Film.? Further ensur-
 ing the centrality of the film-play relation for subsequent scholarship was Brecht's pub.
 lished account of Nero Film's alleged betrayal of his rights as author. 3 As far as I know,
  no investigation has been undertaken into the impact upon both the play and the films
  of the numerous Dreigroschenoper related gramophone recordings produced between

  CINEMA & Cie, no. 7, Fall 2005                                                        35
 CHARLES O'BRIEN


 the play's première in the fall of 1928 and the release of the films some two-and-a-half
 years later.4 The neglect of the gramophone recordings as anything more than spin-off
commodities from the play entails a significant gap in the scholarship, not only
 because these recordings contributed to the popularity of Die Dreigroschenoper but
 because, in certain regards, they helped condition the musical style of both the play and
 the films. In outlining the gramophone's role in mediating Pabst's filmic adaptation of
 the stage production, this paper places new emphasis on the contemporaneous media-
 cultural conditions and forces that had conditioned the aesthetic and industrial matrix
within which the film/stage-production relation took form.
  The play's popularity - manifest by 1930 in a variety of ancillary products, ranging
from gramophone discs to clothing fashions, illustrated wallpaper, and a theme night-
club - had evolved quickly,5 In January 1929, only five months after the première,
Weill's publisher, Universal Edition, under the headline "Triumph of the New Style,"
 announced performances of Die Dreigroschenoper in nineteen German cities, as well as
 in Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. According to a ledger kept by Universal Edition, by
 the summer of 1929, at the end of the year's theatre season, more than fifty new pro.
 ductions of Die Dreigroschenoper had opened across Europe, to yield a total of some
 4,200 performances.
   Enabling this rapid dissemination was the play's unusually high popular-culture pro
 file, itself connected to the popularization of the play's songs via gramophone, radio,
 and dance-band performances.? According to one discography, between 1928 and con-
 tinuing up through 1931, more than forty discs featuring songs from Die
Dreigroschenoper, either in instrumental versions or with vocals in German, appeared
on twenty different labels. Other discographies reportedly list additional recordings
with vocals in Danish, Czech, and Hebrew.° With respect to the French market specifi
cally, a discography published by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France lists thirteen
recordings of songs related to the 1931 release of Pabst's L'Opéra de quat'sous.I0
  Evidence of the gramophone's significance for composer Kurt Weill can be found in a
letter Weill sent to Universal Edition on September 7, 1928, just one week after Die
Dreigroschenoper opened at the Theater am Schiffbauerdam. Unable to finish the
play's full score, Weill nonetheless enclosed charts for what he identified as three
Schlager: the Kanonensong, the Zuhälterballade, and the Liebeslied, so that dance-band
arrangements could be made immediately.I Commenting in a subsequent letter to
Universal Edition on these charts, Weill was forthright: "The main object [of producing
dance-band arrangements] is, after all, that the numbers should be played and sold as
much as possible."12 At the Karlplatz offices of Universal Edition, "no time was lost in
exploiting these [successful songs] with all available 'commercial means," according to
music historian Christopher Hailey: "Individual hit songs from [.) Die
Dreigroschenoper flooded the market, popular editions abounded, recording contracts
were signed, and arrangements were prepared for dance band, jazz ensemble, movie
house orchestras, even military band, and, of course, Universal Edition's publicity office
was working at full capacity."I3
  That extent of the dissemination of the Dreigroschenoper songs, the market satura-
tion through multiple forms of media distribution, raises a question regarding the
potential causal impact of the recordings on the style of the play, and ultimately on the
films, too. By virtue of the mass-marketed recordings, many of those familiar with the
Dreigroschenoper songs hadn't attended a stage performance of the Weill-Brecht opera;

36
                                                      FILM, GRAMOPHONE, AND NATIONAL CINEMA


instead they knew the songs through the gramophone, radio, and live performance. In
addition, the theatre-goers who saw Die Dreigroschenoper, whether in Berlin or in the
dozens of other European cities where it was staged, were increasingly already familiar
with the music. The latter, distributed through the new electric-sound media, could be
heard in a great variety of places - from the domestic space of the home or apartment to
cafés, bars, and other public or quasi-public sites and venues. To regard the gramophone
discs as a commercial by-product of the original Weill-Brecht production is correct in
the limited sense that the recordings wouldn't have existed without the stage produc-
tion; but it is also misleading insofar as it implies a causal relation that flowed in a sin-
gle direction, from original play to derivative recorded music. In fact, evidence suggests
a more complex causality, whereby the recordings, in certain respects, conditioned the
musical performances for certain of the play's stagings.14
  Here the work of the Lewis Ruth Band, led by conductor Theo Mackeben, can be dis-
tinguished from that of the many other jazz orchestras and dance bands that had
recorded Dreigroschenoper songs. Commercially significant examples of the latter
include discs by the Marek Weber Orchestra, whose light-music versions of
Dreigroschenoper songs evolved through weekly performances of the songs in the tea-
room of Berlin's famed Adlon Hotel. What distinguished the Lewis Ruth Band in this
context was its role in accompanying the play during its inaugural season at Berlin's
Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, where the Ruth Band, led by Mackeben, logged some 250
performances with the play's original cast.15 Barely two months after the
Schiffbauerdamm première, the Ruth Band, again under Mackeben's direction, cut the
first recorded versions of the play's songs on November 22, 1928: instrumental versions
of the Kanonensong, and the Zuhälterballade for the Odéon company (Odéon O-
2703).I6 Another notable recording session by the Ruth Band occurred some seven
months later, in May 1929, when the Morität and Ballade von der Unzulänglichkeit
were produced for the Orchestrola label (2131), with Bertolt Brecht himself performing
the vocals. The Ruth Band continued producing such recordings up through its partici-
pation in the making of the Pabst film versions exactly two years later, when, in
November 930, stars of both versions entered the Ultraphon studio during a break in
the shooting to cut eight sides of Dreigroschenoper music. Ultraphon was linked con-
tractually to the music division of Warner Bros., which appears to have allowed for
some distribution of these discs in North America, where they drew the interest of "a
limited circle of aficionados," including composers George Gershwin and Leonard
Bernstein. 17
  Conductor Theo Mackeben's role in shaping the music for these discs merits consid
eration in light of his similar role with respect to other media. Besides directing certain
key Dreigroschenoper gramophone releases, Mackeben also collaborated with Weill in
arranging the play's music, and he directed the music for the film adaptations. For the
disc-recording sessions, as well as for Pabst's Dreigroschenoper soundtrack, Mackeben
 used the same handwritten charts he had used for performances of Die
 Dreigroschenoper at the Schiffbauerdamm. In an analysis of these charts, musician
 Geoffrey Abbott identifies numerous alterations to the score in light of Mackeben's
 assessment of the technical demands of recording. IS Further cuts and changes were
 made in Weill's score in preparing the music tracks for the two film versions - changes
 significant enough to enable Weill's victorious legal action against Nero Film for its fail-
 ure to have consulted him regarding the changes. Mackeben's use of the same charts on
                                                                                          37
 CHARLES O'BRIEN



stage and in the recording studio suggests a complex, dialectical ca
 and recordings, whereby the latter not only derived from but shaped the former.19 A
 specific example of the impact of the recordings on the play's music concerns a key ele
 ment of what Abbott refers to as the "Dreigroschen sound:" Mackeben's practice of dou-
 bling a song's bass line, played either on a grand piano, double bass, or trombone, with
 a tuba. This practice was common in the music industry prior to the introduction of
 electric recording in 1925, when it was used to correct the poor bass response of the
 acoustic technology, "as well as being the typical bass instrument of the twenties dance
 band."2 Contributing to the stage production's evident modernity was this use of a
 musical technique associated not with the traditional concert hall but with recorded
 pop music.


 The French Recordings and L'Opéra de quat sous

   An assessment of the relevance for Pabst's filmic adaptations of Die Dreigroschenope
 of the film-gramophone relation during the early 19305 requires a consideration of
 national differences in the configuration of electric-sound media. In France, for
 instance, the gramophone played an important role in stimulating the popularity of
 the Brecht-Weill songs, and hence in preparing French filmgoers for the French-lan-
guage version of Pabst's film. In a letter from Weill to Universal Edition, dating from the
summer of 1931, the composer wrote: "Friends of mine have just come back from Paris
and confirm the spontaneous success of my songs there. All the world is clamouring for
the printed music and records, and the Mackie Messer song is sung on the streets."I
This letter appears to have been written several months prior to the Paris premiere of
L'Opéra de quat'sous, and suggests the extent to which the gramophone recordings
served to condition the expectations of French film-goers. In a brief account of the
Parisian reception of Pabst's L'Opéra de quat'sous, Weill scholar Stephen Hinton claims
that "the music in particular met with considerable critical acclaim."22
  The relatively large number of French-language recordings of Dreigroschenoper
songs indicates the significance during the early 19305 of the French gramophone mar-
ket for the German film industry. Just as Ufa, Tobis, and other companies made foreign-
language films for French distribution, they also, through their recorded-music divi-
sions, made and marketed film-related discs. French-language recordings of
Dreigroschenoper songs directly relevant to the French version of the Pabst film
include four sides by the Ruth Band on the Ultraphon label featuring Albert Préjean,
Margo Lion, and Jacques Henley, all of whom appear in L'Opéra de quat'sous.23 Among
other Dreigroschenoper recordings released in France ahead of the film's première was
a Pirate Jenny on the Columbia label (DF-873) with vocal by Lys Gauty, for whom Weill
three years later would write music for a popular cabaret act. Additional releases
included further versions by Florelle of La Fiancée du pirate, Chant des canons, and
Complainte de Mackie, released on Polydor (522-172 and 522-171); Marianne Oswald's
Chant des canons, on Columbia (DF-III5); and Damia's Complainte de Mackie, also on
Columbia (DF-568).
  An investigation into the role of the French recordings in conditioning the reception
in France of L'Opéra de quat'sous will require further research into the French media
culture of 1931. In the meantime, it can be noted that the situation in France regarding

38
                                                     FILM, GRAMOPHONE, AND NATIONAL CINEMA


 film and gramophone appears to have differed significantly from that in Germany.
 Most fundamentally, radio, according to broadcasting historian Christian Brochard,
 developed relatively late in France, becoming a national mass medium there only
beginning in I929, and at a level well below that for Germany.24 For instance, in 1929
 radio ownership in France was estimated by Radio-Magazine at roughly 600,000,
whereas the figure for Germany has been estimated at 2,400,000. Figures available for
1932 likewise indicate a four-to-one ratio, with radio ownership in France having
climbed to one million with that in Germany reaching 4.3 million. The four-to-one dif-
ference is significant in light of the two countries film industries' similarities in size.
According to U.S. Department of Commerce statistics on movie theatres worldwide,
France in 1931 possessed 3,300 theatres, 1,450 of which were wired for sound, whereas
Germany had 5,057, 2,500 of which were sound-ready.25 In short, while Germany had
less than twice as many sound-film theatres as France, it had four times as many
radios.26 Also marking network radio's slow development was the relatively high cost
of radio sets in France, where even a minimal three-tube model cost up to 1,000 francs,
and a superior, seven-tube unit cost some ten times as much, a figure amounting to
roughly half the cost of a four-cylinder Citroën.27
  The high cost of radios in France during the early 19305, together with the relatively
weak transmitting power of even the largest stations, had important implications for
the national media culture. For one, it allowed the gramophone to enjoy an unusually
long period of growth in France, and hence to play an unusually close role there rela-
tive to film. According to gramophone-industry historians Pekka Gronow and Ilpo
Saunio, sales of gramophone discs peaked in Germany, Britain, and numerous other
European countries in I929, and then fell steadily during the next eight to ten years.28
In the U.S., the country estimated to possess nearly half of the world's radio sets, gramo-
phone sales topped out even earlier, in 1926, at 128 million; sales figures for discs and
players in the U.S. then began plummeting, year-by-year, to reach a mere six million in
1932. The gramophone situation in France is more difficult to determine, given the
sparseness of French record-industry documentation. Nonetheless, the documentation
that does exist suggests that in contrast to the situation in the U.S., Britain, the
Netherlands, and Germany, the gramophone industry did well in France during the
early 19305.29 According to a research team at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
gramophone sales in France may, in fact, have moved upward during the early 19305 -
in contrast to the pronounced downward movement in Germany, the U.S., England,
and elsewhere. 30 In short, the "gramophone fever" that had peaked throughout the
Western world circa 1929 seems to have had a longer life in France, just as entertain-
ment radio during the early I930s played a less pivotal role in France than in Germany,
Britain, or the United States.
   My research into national-media differences during the early I93os is still in its early
stages. Much more work pertaining both to radio, film and gramophone must be under-
taken to document the differences in question. Nonetheless, the evidence as it stands
now suggests that the sound-era French cinema links with the gramophone were less
mediated by radio than was the case in Germany, the United States, and Great Britain.
This proximity may have carried important implications for the national film style. In
 Germany, where public radio stations in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Königsberg pursued
 highly innovative musical and dramatic programming - including the commissioning
 of funkeigene compositions from Weill and Brecht - radio may well have provided the
                                                                                        39
CHARLES O'BRIEN



principal model in Germany for sound film style, as film historian Wo
Benninghaus has suggested.31 A related technological factor was the German film
 industry's nearly exclusive reliance on sound-on-film systems, which further dimin-
 ished the relevance to German film practice of disc-derived, gramophone-industry
recording norms. Far more so than in France, where sound filmmaking, in a manner
 familiar to the gramophone industry, was conceived in terms of the recording of per-
 formances, German sound-film production - in a manner analogous to radio drama -
 often treated the soundtrack as a construction, an assemblage of separate compo.
 nents.32 Also conditioning the constructed nature of the German film soundtrack were
 the demands of large-scale multiple-version production, which necessitated what
 might be called a modular approach to film technique, whereby specific elements of
 sound and image can be extracted from a film and replaced so as to create versions for
particular export markets.33



Musical Differences between the Two Films

  For an inquiry into the effects of the export cinema's technical modularity on the
Pabst-directed films, Roberto Calabretto's careful analysis of similarities and differences
between the two films' music tracks provides an essential base of reference.34 As
Calabretto details, of the fifteen pieces of music featured in the films, nine exhibit
notable differences from one another. Although certain songs raise unique questions,
the music tracks for the two films display a general difference in tone. Whereas the
German version features the aggressive attack and angular rhythms familiar to the
Lewis Ruth Band's earlier Dreigroschenoper recordings, the French version often
exhibits a lighter and more uniform playing style. In short, the German version pre-
serves the Brecht-Weill-Mackeben style familiar to the German public, while the
French film - in more than half of its musical passages - inclines in a different direction
stylistically, toward the light music characteristic of French boulevard comedy and
music hall.35
  Enabling musical differences between the two films were the technical conditions of
the production. The two film versions were made simultaneously, in the manner com-
mon in German multiple-version production, whereby actors for each version rotated
through the sets, one shot set-up at a time.36 For scenes featuring musical numbers, the
Lewis Ruth Band played offscreen while the cameras ran. With the music captured in
two separate takes, simultaneously with the two sets of images, each of the film ver
sions features its own unique recording of the songs, a circumstance that allowed
Mackeben to modify certain of the songs for the French version, in light of his assess-
ment of the singers' vocal characteristics, as well as national differences in musical
taste. Regarding such differences, a telling case is provided by Florelle's performance of
the Barbara Song. As Calabretto suggests, the French version effaces the dialectical ten-
sion, the calculated clash in tone, between music and lyrics essential to Weill and
Brecht's conception of the songs, to thus render straightforwardly the lyrical-opera
movement that the German film had parodied.37
  A particularly complex and fascinating example of film-musical difference concerns
the bordello scene featuring the song Pirate-Jenny. In the French version, singer Margo
Lion's vocal delivery involves a rapid and highly varied succession of styles, attitudes,
40
                                                      FILM, GRAMOPHONE, AND NATIONAL CINEMA


and tones. Further, despite the framing of Lion in a manner virtually identical to Lenya,
with the mise-en-scene of the French version amounting to virtually a shot-for-shot
copy of the German, the heterogeneity of Lion's vocal style is paralleled by considerable
diversity in physical gesture. In contrast to Lenya's series of static poses, Lion projects a
mood of agitation. While remaining in roughly the same position on the set, Lion peri
odically widens and narrows her eyes, shifts the weight of her body, leans slightly for-
ward and back, and, during one moment, gazes slowly from left to right, as if address-
ing not only Mackie but additional unseen auditors.
  Margo Lion's differentiated repertoire of gestures and vocal mannerisms is appropri-
ate in light of the narrative situation, which makes the singer's volatility interpretable
in terms of Jenny's struggle to suppress her jealous anger over Mackie's recent wedding.
This sort of performance may seem at odds with the deliberately a-psychological, "epic"
stance commonly attributed to the Weill-Brecht play, but it finds justification in a deci-
sive alteration of the script made by Pabst.38 In the Schiffbauerdamm production, th
song Pirate Jenny was sung by the character Polly rather than by lenny. Thus, as with
other important songs in the play - like the Barbara Song or the Kanonen Song - Pirate
Jenny refers to the life of a character other than that of the singer herself. This dis-
placement from the first- to the third-person facilitated Weill and Brecht's injunction
that the play's singers "adopt attitudes" rather than disclose the characters' emotions.39
In this context, the great significance of Pabst's alteration, whereby it is Jenny who now
sings Pirate Jenny, is to open the way for the merger of singer into character, and hence
for the sort of emotive dramatic performance characteristic of the chanteuse réaliste
familiar to the contemporaneous French cinema.40 It is this sort of performance that
Lion's performance so brilliantly suggests, and that Brecht claimed he had wanted to
foreclose.41
   In this context, Lenya's performance as Jenny in the German version cuts sharply
 against the grain of possibilities opened by Pabst's alteration of the script. Rather than
 convey emotions, Lenya's mannered posing suggests radical disconnection from what-
 ever might be regarded as the character's emotional state. The stylization is evident in
 the peculiar positioning of Lenya's hands in many of the scene's shots, which often con-
 clude with Lenya enacting statue-like gestures that are not replicated in Lion's perform-
 ance for the French version. Contributing further to the uncanniness of Lenya's per-
 formance are the song's calculated downward shifts in tempo. The norm in the record-
  ed-music industry of the time was to accelerate the tempo in the course of the perform-
  ance, by virtue of the need to fit songs into the limited duration of the 78-rpm disc, as
  recorded-music historian Robert Philips explains.42 In this respect, the song Pirate
  Jenny, whose tempo noticeably slows down after each of the three choruses, unfolds in
  a manner contrary to contemporaneous expectation. Of course, Weill wrote the song
 this way; thus similar drops in tempo occur in the French version, although, as
 Calabretto suggests, the effect of these drops seems less pronounced than in the German.
 Indicative of the German film's singularity is a curious moment that occurs just after the
 first repetition of the song's chorus. The band, after having slowed its tempo, plays the
 song's jagged groove, while Lenya, for a brief moment prior to the continuation of her
 singing, bobs her head silently to the musical rhythm. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what
 is going on here - although the novelty is imposing. Long on affect and short on emo
 tion, Lenya's rather vacant, de-psychologized performance differs greatly not only from
  Margo Lion's performance of the same number in the French version but from that of

                                                                                          41
    CHARLES O'BRIEN



    any other filmed singing performance of the period that I know of. Far from exemplify
    the dance music of the early 1930s, Lenya's performance seems instead to point ahead to
    a style of "cool" associated with popular music since the 19505.43


    Fashions, Musical and Otherwise

   A critical attention to acts of posing and self-display is central to an important analy.
 sis of the German version of the Pabst film by Thomas Elsaesser, who notes the extent
 to which Rudolf Forster, in the role of Mackie, appears conscious of the impact of his
 appearance on other characters.44 Framed throughout the film in proscenium-like
 doorways and windows, Forster, Elsaesser suggests, functions for the film's viewer as
 something of a model of successful consumer behaviour. An ideal-typical consumer,
 the stylish Mackie knows how to dress, and how to enter a room so as to make exactly
 the right impression - an impression, one can add, whose impact often entails popular-
 song accompaniment. The pop song's utility in this context is signaled from the open.
 ing moments of the Pabst film, when, as Elsaesser observes, it is the playing of the
Mackie Messer ballad that draws Mackie through the crowded, winding streets and into
the portrait-like frame of a stationary medium close-up.
   Themes of vanity and self display can be traced back to the Brecht-Weill play, in
which posing figures as something of a core theme (think of the character Peachum -
the beggar's haberdasher).45 According to an anecdote regarding the play's production,
lead performer Harald Paulsen is said to have insisted on a crucial costume modifica-
tion. As theatre historian Foster Hirsch puts it, "Paulsen agreed to remain only if he
could be allowed to wear a blue necktie, which he felt gave him the key to playing
MacHeath as a bourgeois gentlemen who just happened to make his living as a highway
man."46 A member of the production team for the two film versions, sound editor Hans
Oser, commented on Dreigroschenoper fashion circa 1930 by noting the extent to
which Mackie and Polly attracted the emulation of the numerous young couples who
seemed to imitate their dress. 47 Pinpointing the status of Die Dreigroschenoper as a cul
tural watershed, Oser saw the opera's style as displacing that of the preceding landmark
stage- and film-musical, Franz Lehar's Igo7 operetta The Merry Widow. As Oser
observed, the young men who used to imagine themselves as Count Danilo now struck
the pose of Mack the Knife.
   Oser's popular-music analogy is appropriate to the consumer culture of the early
1930s, when acts of fashion-conscious self-display increasingly occurred against the
background of electrically amplified popular songs, and when the young consumers of
the time, while mimicking the dress of Mackie and Polly, also purchased discs, players,
and radios. In examining multiple version films such as Pabst's adaptations of Die
Dreigroschenoper, it may prove illuminating to situate them relative to other new elec-
tric sound media productions of the time, such as the thousands of film-related gramo-
phone discs. The latter also circulated in multiple versions, and helped shape the mak-
ing of the films, as well as their reception, both inside and outside the cinema theatre.


I    I wish to thank Hans-Michael Bock, Peppino Ortoleva, Natasa Durovicová, and other
     bers of the 2005 Gradisca Spring School audience for their helpful comments on this paper. I

42
                                                             FILM, GRAMOPHONE, AND NATIONAL CINEMA


    also wish to thank the students who attended my workshop on the Pabst films for helping
    me see, and hear, the films in new ways. Any flaws in the paper remain solely the author's
    responsibility.
    Regarding the lawsuit against Nero Film, and the latter's effects upon the status of Die
    Dreigroschenoper in film historiography, see the illuminating discussion in Thomas
  Elsaesser, "Transparent Duplicities: Pabst's The Threepenny Opera," in Weimar Cinema and
  After: Germany's Historical Imaginary (London-New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 31 I-329.
3 Brief extracts from Brecht's lengthy text appear in "The Film, the Novel and Epic Theatre," in
  Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, ed. and trans. John Willet (London: Methuen, 1964), pp. 47-
   51. A full-length facsimile reproduction of Der Dreigroschenprozeß: Ein sociologisches
   Experiment can be found in Hans-Michael Bock, Jürgen Berger, with Gero Gandert (eds.),
    Photo Casparius (Berlin: Staatliche Kunsthalle, 1978).
4 Invaluable partial exceptions include the work of Jürgen Schebera and Geoffrey Abbott, list-
    ed in the notes below.
5 Concerning these and other expressions of Dreigroschen-fever, see Stephen Hinton, "The
   Première and After," in Stephen Hinton (ed.), Kurt Weill: The Threepenny Opera (Cambridge,
   England-New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), especially pp. 56-59.
6 See S. Hinton, "The Première and After," cit., p. 50; and also lürgen Schebera, "Old
   Dreigroschenoper Records," in Kurt Weill, Die Dreigroschenoper, Historische
   Originalaufnahmen, 1928-1931, compact disc, Capriccio, 10-346, 1990, Delta Music Gmbh.
7 The play's association with the gramophone endured into the Nazi era. According to Weill
   scholar Schebera, "Die Dreigroschenoper constantly stood in the forefront of the Nazis
   abuse: at the notorious 1938 exhibition of 'Entartete Musik' in Düsseldorf, the old shellac
   discs were exhibited as fearful examples." In J. Schebera, op. cit., n.p.
8 See lürgen Schebera, "Neue Entdeckungen auf Schellack," Notate, Vol. II, no. 3 (I988),
   and J. Schebera, "Old Dreigroschenoper Records," cit., n.p.
9 See here the introductory remarks to Stephen Hinton, "Discography," in S. Hinton (ed.), o
   cit., p. 218.
10 In Giusy Basile, Chantal Gavouyère (eds.), La Chanson française dans le cinéma des année
   trentes: discographie (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 1996), p. 74. The thirteen songs
   in question were released on eight separate discs.
11 See Geoffrey Abbott, "The 'Dreigroschen' Sound," in S. Hinton (ed.), op. cit., p. 164.
12 In an October 1929 letter to Universal Edition, Weill stated, "That my music to Die
   Dreigroschenoper has been industrialized does not argue against our standpoint but for it."
   Quoted in J. Schebera, "Old Dreigroschenoper Records," cit. In a September 6, 1928 letter to
   Universal Edition, Weill explained the delay in submitting the full score in a manner that
   may point to Mackeben's role in contributing to the music: "I'm still busy at the moment
   completing the score following the experiences of the current production." Quot
   Stephen Hinton, "Matters of Intellectual Property: The Sources and Genesis of Die
   Dreigroschenoper," in S. Hinton (ed.), op. cit., p. 33.
13 Christopher Hailey, "Creating a Public, Addressing a Market: Kurt Weill and Universal
   Edition," in Kim Kowalke (ed.), A New Orpheus: Essays on Kurt Weill (New Haven-London:
   Yale University Press, 1986), p. 24.
14 Critics today concerned with the Schiffbauerdamm première often rely on period recordings
   to reconstruct the event, which sometimes leads to mistakes, such as the attribution of Pirate
   Jennyto Lenya, who performed the song in the Pabst film, on disc, and ultimately on stage, but
   not for the Schiffbauerdamm opening. See S. Hinton, "The Première and After," cit., pp. 5I-52.
                                                                                                43
 CHARLES O'BRIEN


 15 A list of gramophone releases featuring the Lewis Ruth Band can be found in S. Hinton,
     "Discography", cit., pp. 218-2I9.
 16 The Odeon recordings were released in January 1929. In an interview conducted in Paris in
    1934 Weill stated his preference for these recordings on the grounds that, unlike other record.
    ed versions of the plays' songs, the Odeon releases featured arrangements that he had
     approved. In Ole Windung, "Kurt Weill I Exil," Aften-Avisen (June 21, I934), quoted in G.
     Abbott, op. cit., p. 180.
 17 See Kim Kowalke, "The Threepenny Opera in America," in S. Hinton (ed.), op. c
     These Ultraphon recordings, which feature Lenya in the female roles, were also released o
     the Telefunken and Capitol labels. Upon emigrating from Germany, Weill and Lenya came to
     expect that people in certain countries might know their work through specific gramophone
     discs, or one of the Pabst-directed film versions. According to Kowalke, Gershwin "told Weill
     and Lenya at a party shortly after their arrival in New York in 1935 how very fond he had
     become of the Telefunken recordings, except that he had never liked the 'squitchadickeh
     voice of the leading lady; Lenya never forgave the remark", Ibid. Bernstein first heard the
     Dreigroschenoper recordings while a college student in New York.
 18 See G. Abbott, op.cit. Abbott's analysis is based upon a copy of the piano-conductor score, pub
    lished by Universal Edition in November 1928, with handwritten parts added by Mackeben.
I9 By the time of the stage production of Die Dreigroschenoper Mackeben was known as one of
     Berlin's most skilled and professional popular musicians. The owner of the Theatre am
     Schiffbauerdamm, Ernst Josef Aufricht, later claimed that he was prepared to turn the musi
     cal aspect of the project over to Mackeben if Weill's work had proved unsatisfactory: "I [..
     found Weill's music too atonal for a theatre piece and asked Theo Mackeben, whom I had
     engaged as musical director, to get hold of the original music of the 'Beggar's Opera' by
     Pepusch so as to have a replacement ready." Ernst Josef Aufricht, Erzähle, damit du dein Recht
     erweist (Berlin: Propyläen 1966), quoted in S. Hinton, "Matters of Intellectual Property': The
    Sources and Genesis of Die Dreigroschenoper," cit., p. 17.
20 In G. Abbott, op. cit., p. 167. According to recorded-music historian Robert Philip, the use of a
    tuba to double the bass line was standard acoustic-era recording practice but became less
    common following the recording industry's changeover to electric sound circa 1925. Philip
   cites recordings by the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra as examples of the move during the late
    1920s away from the tuba-boosted bass line. Robert Philip, Performing Music in the Age of
   Recording (New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 65. But while Philip claims
   that symphony orchestras began abandoning the doubled bass line during the electric era,
   Abbott's account suggests that the practice endured in the dance-band field. Further evidence
   for the endurance into the electric era of the "vexing question of strengthening the basses"
     can be found in the discussion of the doubled bass line in Jerzy Fitelberg, "Aspects of
   Instrumentation Today," Modern Music, Vol. 9, no. I (November-December 1931), PP. 28-30.
21 Quoted in J. Schebera, "Old Dreigroschenoper Records," cit., n.p.
22 S. Hinton, "The Première and After," cit., p. 63. Much additional work will be required for a
   thorough study of the Parisian reception of the film and gramophone recordings.
23 The French-language Ultraphon discs were recorded in November 1930, simultaneously with
   the production of the film, and were released the following January. Préjean, with Henley,
   sings the Chant des canons and the Ballade de la vie agrable (APII4) while Lion sings Polly's
     Love Song and the Tango Ballad (API13).
24 See Christian Brochand, Histoire générale de la radio et de la telévision en France (Paris:
     Documentation française, I994).

44
                                                           FILM, GRAMOPHONE, AND NATIONAL CINE


25 These figures are cited in James Trumpbour, Selling Hollywood to the World: U.S. and
   European Struggles for Mastery of the Global Film Industry, 1920-1950 (Cambridge, England-
   New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 5. With respect to the situation in other
   countries, England was reported to have 4,850 theatres, 4, 100 of which were sound-ready; and
   the U.S. was estimated to have 20,000 theatres, with 13,500 wired for sound.
26 Annual radio-ownership figures for Germany during 1923-I932 are as follows: 1,580 (1923);
   548,749 (1924); I,022,299 (1925); 1,376,564 (I926); 2,009,842 (I927); 2,635,567 (I928); 3,066,682
   (I929) 3,509,509 (1930); 3,980,852 (I931); 4,307,722 (1932). The figures refer to the situation as
   of January 1, for each of the years cited. They appear in Heinz Vollmann, Rechtlich-
   wirtschaftlich- soziologische Grundlagen der deutschen Rundfunkentwicklung (Borna:
   Noske, 1936), and are reproduced and discussed in Karl Christian Führer, "A Medium of
   Modernity? Broadcasting in Weimar Germany, 1923-1932," The Journal of Modern History,
   Vol. 69, no. 4 (December I997), P. 731.
27 My claims here are based on prices quoted in advertisements for these products that had
   appeared in the entertainment daily Comedia during the weeks prior to the Paris première
   of L'Opéra de quat'sous in November 1931. Participants in the 2005 Gradisca Spring School
   may also recall the scene in the Pathé-Natan production Je t'adore... mais pourquoi? (Pierre
   Colombier, 1931), in which the young gigolo's wealth is signaled through his ownership of a
   six tube radio.
28 Pekka Gronow, Ilpo Saunio, An International History of the Recording Industry (London-
   New York: Cassell, 1998), pp. 37-4.
29 See G. Basile, C. Gavouyère (eds.), op. cit., and Marc Monneraye, Giusy Basile, "Le cinéma qui
   chante et le disc," in Emmanuelle Toulet (ed.), Le Cinéma au rendez-vous des arts: France,
   années 20 et 30 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1995), pp. 146-161.
30 In G. Basile, C. Gavouère (eds.), op. cit. One historian proposes that "temporary reductions
   in the numbers of records pressed and sold" in the depression-era U.S. made jazz records hard
   to obtain in Paris, where the demand for such records was still strong. See Jeffrey Jackson,
     "Making Enemies: Jazz in Interwar Paris," French Cultural Studies, Vol. I0, no. 29 (1999), p.
   198. Also felt in Paris was the depression's impact on "the major British companies [e.g., HMV
   and Columbia, which reformed as EMI in 1931], whose combined profits declined by go per-
   cent in 1930-1931, and which "provided many recordings to the continent", Ibid.
31 See Wolfgang Mühl-Benninghaus, Das Ringen um den Tonfilm: Strategien der Electro- und
    der Filmindustrie in den zoer und 3oer Jahren (Düseldorf: Droste, 1999). Regarding German
   radio programming, see Christopher Hailey, "Rethinking Sound: Music and Radio in Weimar
    Germany," in Bryan Gilliam (ed.), Music and Performance during the Weimar Republic
    (Cambridge, England-New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 26. Hailey examines
    how radio in Germany, beginning in 1928, when stations began commissioning works from
    composers, didn't simply broadcast a pre-existing repertoire, but created one of its own.
    Examples include the Weill-Brecht-Hindemith collaboration Der Flug der Lindberghs, which
    was broadcast in July 1929, when it became "the most talked-about [music-radiol work of the
    eras
 32 Regarding the centrality of a recording-based conception of the scene in French film practice,
    see Charles O'Brien, Cinema's Conversion to Sound: Technology and Film Style in France and
    the U.S. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005).
 33 See, for instance, Natasa Durovicová, "Local Ghosts: Dubbing Bodies in Early Sound Cinema,"
    in Anna Antonini (ed.), Film and Its Multiples / Il film e i suoi multipli (Udine: Forum, 2003),
    pp. 83-98.

                                                                                                  45
CHARLES O'BRIEN


34 Roberto Calabretto, "Due versioni musicali a confronto: Die Dreigroschenoper e L'Opéra de
   quat' sous di Georg Wilhelm Pabst," CINÉMA& Cie, no. 4, Natasa Durovicová, in collaboration
   with Hans-Michael Bock (eds.), Multiple and Multiple-language Versions / Versions multi-
     ples (Spring 2004), pp. 30-47.
35 During November 1931, the month of the Paris première of L'Opéra de quat'sous at the
   Ursulines, Albert Prejean performed a music-hall routine on stage at the nearby Alhambra
   music hall.
36 My research into the production circumstances regarding Pabst's adaptation of Die
     Dreigroschenoper is in its early stages. The claim regarding the simultaneous making of the
     two versions is based partly on the existence of production stills that show the two versions
     pairs of male and female stars in costume during pauses in shooting. For further information
     on the making of the films, see H.-M. Bock, J. Berger, with G. Gandert (eds.), op. cit, which,
     among other documents, includes a copy of the film's script, materials related to Brecht's and
     Weill's lawsuits against the production company, censorship decisions, and the films' critical
     reception. Unfortunately I obtained a copy of this rich resource too late to work out fully its
     implications for the argument presented in this paper.
37 The departure from theoretical doctrine didn't count as a defect for Weill, who admired
   Florelle's performance and sought to work with her again, and did so upon emigrating to
   France in 1933. See here Lys Symonette, Kim Kowalke (eds. and trans.), Speak Low (When
    You Speak Love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya (Berkeley Los Angeles: University
   of California Press, 1996), pP. I43-144, I66.
38 The change evidently was made sometime after July-August 1930, and completion of the first
   version of the script, written by Leo Lania and Ladislaus Vajda. A facsimile copy of this ver-
   sion, with handwritten notes by Pabst, is included in H. M. Bock, J. Berger, with G. Gandert
   (eds.), op. cit. The typed script stipulating that Jenny is to sing the Tango Ballad for the bor
   dello scene between Mackie and Jenny has been crossed out in pen, presumably by Pabst, and
   replaced by the handwritten phrase "Ballade das Schiff mit den 50 Kanonen." In H.-M. Bock,
     J. Berger, with G. Gandert (eds.), op. cit., p. 346.
39 The quote is from S. Hinton, 'Matters of Intellectual Property: The Sources and Genesis of
   Die Dreigroschenoper," cit., p. 46.
40 Lion herself was not French but German, although she pursued her singing career in Paris as
   well as in Berlin. On the topic of the existential authenticity embodied by the French realist
   singers, see Kelley Conway, Chanteuse in the City (Berkeley Los Angeles: University of
   California Press, 2004).
41 On the staging of Die Dreigroschemoper, see, for example, Bertolt Brecht, "The Literalization
   of the Theatre," in B. Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, cit., pp. 43-47. This short piece includes the
     famous injunction that "the actor must not only sing but show a man singing. His aim is not
     so much to bring out the emotional content of his song [.] but to show gestures that are so to
     speak the habits and usage of the body". B. Brecht, "The Literalization of the Theatre," cit, pp.
     44-45.
42 On gramophone-industry norms during the interwar years, see the discussion of "time limits
   and side joins" in R. Philip, op. cit, pp. 35-38.
43 On the distinction between affect and emotion, see Noël Carroll, "Film, Emotion, and Genre,"
   in Carl Plantinga, Greg M. Smith (eds.), Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion
   (Baltimore-London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 21-47. For Carroll, emotions
   are directed toward specific objects or people, and hence "require cognitions as causes and
   bodily states as effects," whereas manifestations of affect such as "kinesthetic turbulence,

46
                                                           FILM, GRAMOPHONE, AND NATIONAL CINEMA


   moods, sexual arousal, and instinctual responses" seem "barely mediated by thought." From
   this standpoint, the evident vacancy of Lenya's performance lacks the object-directedness
   that would invite its characterization as emotional - in contrast to Lion's naturalistic, psy-
   chological approach.
44 Th. Elsaesser, op. cit.
45 See the discussion of the fashion theme in Daniel Albright, "Kurt Weill as Modernist,"
   Modernism/Modernity, Vol. 7, no. 2 (2000), pp. 273-284.
46 Foster Hirsch, Kurt Weill on Stage: From Berlin to Broadway (New York: Limelight, 2002), p.
   38. A rakish photo of the well-dressed Paulsen as Mackie can be found in J. Schebera, "Old
   Dreigroschenoper Records," cit., in a reproduction of Homocord ad for a recording of Paulsen
   as Mackie made in August 1930.
47 The interview appears in Roger Manvell, Masterworks of the German Cinema (London:
   Lorrimer, 1973) and is quoted in Th. Elsaesser, op, cit., p. 326.




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