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A carregar... The Beggar's Opera [1953 film]por Peter Brook (Director)
Nenhum(a) Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro.  Waldstein | May 1, 2020 | 
 Olivier's failure in the realm of musical comedy would have mattered no more than his failure in the realm of musicianship had it not been redoubled by a failure in the realm of reality. His highwayman is not only no singer, he is not only no musical comedian; he is no highwayman. The lightness of John Gay's manner is in direct, not inverse, ratio to his seriousness as a satirist; if his Beggar's Opera says nothing, it is nothing. The nullity of the film cannot be attributed to limitations in either Sir Laurence's technique or his powers of characterization. It must in great part be laid at the door of the adaptor, Christopher Fry, and the director, Peter Brook.  Pure pleasure—the ballad-opera about the highwayman Captain Macheath and his escapes from the law and the ladies, with Laurence Olivier doing his own singing (he has a pleasant light baritone) as the dashing Macheath. This is one of his most playful, sophisticated, and least-known roles. It was Swift who suggested that a “Newgate pastoral might make an odd pretty sort of thing,” and John Gay worked out the idea in a new form—a musical play with the lyrics fitted to existing music. To Londoners weary of the bombast of Italian opera, Gay’s corrupt gang of thieves, highwaymen, whores, and informers was the fresh, sweet breath of England. Gay satirized the politics of the day as well as the heroics of Italian opera; many of his targets are now a matter for historians, but the large butt of the joke—the corruption and hypocrisy of mankind—still sits around. And by the time Peter Brook directed this film (his first, and the only comedy he has ever made), a new set of conventions, as tired and inflated as Italian opera, was ready for potshots—the conventions of the movies: the chaste heroines, the intrepid Robin Hood heroes, the phony realism. Está contido emEight Great Comedies por Sylvan Barnet (indirecta) The Beggar's Opera and Polly (Oxford World's Classics) por John Gay (indirecta) The Poetical Works of John Gay por John Gay (indirecta) Plays written by Mr. John Gay, viz. The captives, ... The beggar's opera. Polly, ... Achilles, ... The distress'd wife, por John Gay (indirecta) The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 1C: The Restoration and the 18th Century por David Damrosch (indirecta) Eighteenth-Century Plays por Ricardo Quintana (indirecta) English Comedies por John Gassner (indirecta) The Beggar's Opera and Other Eighteenth-Century Plays (Everyman's Library) por David W. Lindsay (indirecta) Eighteenth Century Plays por John Hampden (indirecta) Eighteenth Century Comedy por W.D. Taylor (indirecta)
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Laurence Olivier – Captain MacHeath
Dorothy Tutin – Polly Peachum
Daphne Anderson – Lucy Lockit
Stanley Holloway – Mr Lockit
Yvonne Furneaux – Jenny Diver
Hugh Griffith – The Beggar
George Rose – 1st Turnkey
Mary Clare – Mrs Peachum
Libretto by John Gay
Additional Dialogue and Lyrics by Christopher Fry
Music arranged and composed by Sir Arthur Bliss
Screenplay by Denis Cannan
Directed by Peter Brook
Colour. 90 min.
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This bizarre concoction was the only musical and probably the greatest flop in the long and brilliant career of Laurence Olivier. Based on an 18th-century ballad opera about the dastardly deeds of Captain MacHeath, a highwayman, womanizer and all-around rogue, this is potentially amusing stuff. Not here. The story is too scrappy even by the lenient standards of picaresque pictures, and Peter Brook’s stodgy direction doesn’t help the matter. The music is consistently third-rate and awkwardly inserted into the narrative, often in short songs and ensembles. So far as I could hear, neither the dialogue nor the lyrics contain a single memorable line. Pretty costumes, vivid colours and fine cast valiantly try to save the ship, but it’s no use. It plummeted to the bottom in 1953 and has remained there ever since. Worth seeing for Larry at his most handsome, dashing and vocal (he did his own singing, as did Stanley Holloway and no one else), but even the greatest Olivier fans must agree this curiosity is justly forgotten today. (