The Beggar's Opera

The Beggar's Opera is a 1953 British historical musical film, a Technicolor adaptation of John Gay's 1728 ballad opera of the same name. The film, directed by Peter Brook in his feature film debut, stars Laurence Olivier (in his sole musical), Hugh Griffith, Dorothy Tutin, Stanley Holloway, Daphne Anderson and Athene Seyler. Olivier and Holloway provide their own singing, but Tutin and others were dubbed. With additional dialogue and lyrics by Christopher Fry, the film expands on some elements in the opera, such as giving Mrs Trapes a larger role and adding dramatic action sequences to Macheath's escape. The framing device is also changed: the Beggar is himself a prisoner in Newgate with the real Macheath, who escapes at the end under cover of the confusion created when the Beggar decides that his fictional Macheath should be reprieved. Plot In the 1700s, a beggar is tossed into London's Newgate jail, along with a pile of papers upon which his unfinished opera is scribbled. The beggar boasts to the other prisoners that his opera, unlike others of the day, is about a real person, the dashing highwayman Captain Macheath, who, dressed in a red coat, holds off the world with a pistol in each hand, seduces women with five notes of a tune, and generally leaps from misfortune. To the beggar's disappointment, the other prisoners point out that his hero Macheath is among them, in irons and behind bars, and Macheath, who is scheduled to be executed the next morning, admits that there is "no arguing with reality." Taking the first page of the opera, Macheath begins singing, and the beggar, encouraged by Macheath's good voice, urges him to continue, until the following story, the beggar's opera, is sung for the prison inmates: While riding to London, feeling merry and free, Macheath robs a carriage, and steals a kiss and a locket from a maiden. Later, in London, Macheath's wife, Polly Peachum, pines for him. Polly's parents, shopkeepers Mr. Peachum and his wife, are scandalized to learn from their employee Filch that Polly has secretly married the highwayman. To make the best of the situation, as they are always eager to make money, they urge her to lure Macheath into a trap and collect the reward for his capture.