London, Soho, late 1920s: Mack the Knife (Rudolf Forster), boss of the London underworld and incorrigible womanizer, falls madly in love with the beautiful Polly Peachum (Carola Neher), daughter of the London beggar king. Despite her father's staunch opposition, he marries her the same night. Together with police chief Tiger-Brown (Reinhold Schünzel), Peachum (Fritz Rasp) then spins an intrigue to finally put Mack the Knife behind bars. Director G.W. Pabst staged Bertolt Brecht's world-famous play in 1931, despite a conflict between the production company and the author. This dispute attracted a great deal of attention then, as it does now, and was widely commented on in the press. Most recently, in 2018, the story of this trial was even filmed under the title Mack the Knife - Brecht's Threepenny Film.