The Beggar's Opera is a 1953 film version of John Gay's ballad opera directed by Peter Brook and starring Laurence Olivier, Dorothy Tutin, Stanley Holloway and others. Olivier and Holloway do their own singing in this film, but Dorothy Tutin and several others were dubbed. This was Laurence Olivier's only film musical.
With additional dialogue and lyrics by Christopher Fry, the film expands on some elements in the opera, notably giving Mrs Trapes...
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The Beggar's Opera is a 1953 film version of John Gay's ballad opera directed by Peter Brook and starring Laurence Olivier, Dorothy Tutin, Stanley Holloway and others. Olivier and Holloway do their own singing in this film, but Dorothy Tutin and several others were dubbed. This was Laurence Olivier's only film musical.
With additional dialogue and lyrics by Christopher Fry, the film expands on some elements in the opera, notably giving Mrs Trapes (Athene Seyler) a larger role and adding dramatic action sequences to Macheath's escape.
The framing device is also changed: the Beggar (Hugh Griffith) 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.
The film also includes one of the first film performances of the comic actor Kenneth Williams.
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