More nostalgia — 1930’s, this time

Two scenes from Die Dreigroschenoper [The Threepenny Opera] (1931), the film by G.W. Pabst that infuriated its authors, Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill, by removing most of its nihilism. It’s a very fine film, nonetheless. The first piece features Lotte Lenya as Pirate Jenny, in one of the most seductively subversive songs ever written….

….and the second Ernst Busch in Moritatsong, later ruined by Frank Sinatra, among others, as Mack the Knife.