Brecht's play, Kurt Weill's score, G.W. Pabst's direction, and the legendary cast (Rudolph Forster, Lotte Lenya, Carola Neher) add up to a rare triumph of left-wing cinema that survives the years and the attempts of the Nazis to destroy all the prints. As entertainment or as ironic commentary on the underworld character of bourgeois social relations (or is it the bourgeois, businesslike character of underworld transactions?), Threepenny Opera is ambitious, spectacular, and largely successful in its aims and techniques. According to Sadoul:
“...the most memorable aspects of the film are the songs of Kurt Weill (and the atmosphere created by the cameraman Fritz-Arno Wagner and the art director Andrei Andreiev. ‘(They) contrived to clothe everything in chiaroscuro and mist, making the brick walls of the Thames-side docks and Soho slums both real and fantastic at the same time. Swirls of dust and smoke wreath the dwellings of the beggar king and cling to the bare walls... and hover in the nuptial shed on the docks, softening the splendor of the tables brimming with fruit and silverware amid the reflections of the gentle candlelight.... The encounter of the renaissance of Impressionism and the waning of the Expressionism is a happy one.... It is seen here in the gaudy shots of the brothel, with its Victorian lushness confined in plushness and drapery and its fin-de-siècle statue of a negress. In this black and white film, the provocative déshabillés with Edwardian-style corsets, Caligari-ish light-colored gloves with black ribbing and bespatted boots, do even more to heighten the impression of color' (Lotte Eisner).”