Best movies like The Beggar's Opera
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Unlike any other opera, the so-called Beggar's Opera is not just one composition, but a lineage of adapted compositions, beginning with the original hugely successful 1728 political satire written by Englishman John Gay. Composers and writers have penned variations on it ever since. The most famous of these was A Threepenny Opera by Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Some things these compositions share in common is their setting among the poor and criminal classes, and the roguish character Macheath. This production is based on an adaptation of Gay's original by Vaclav Havel the freedom-fighter, writer and philosopher who became the first (and only) president of the united post-communist country of Czechoslovakia, and it retains many traces of its theatrical origins. Film reviewers were not too tolerant of what they called "slavish adherence" to the noted Czech writer's stage production, but theater, philosophy and history buffs may feel otherwise.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 181
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like The Beggar's Opera (1991):
Similar in 86%
The Stig-Helmer Story (2011)
Plot Summary:
The Stig-Helmer Story is a 2011 Swedish comedy film directed by Lasse Åberg. The film is the sixth in the series about Stig-Helmer Olsson.
IMDB Rating: 4.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Sweden, USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
The Pad (1980)
Plot Summary:
Two former classmates (one an honest working man with a wife and children, the other a conman) meet at a train station. The conman comes to stay with his old friend and slowly begins to assume the role of master of the house, taking the place of the father and husband. Made for television with a screenplay by Marek Nowakowski. The film sat on a shelf for 9 years, and was shown only on the wave of solidarity in 1980. Awards: 1981 - 8 Polish Film Festival, Gdańsk, special jury prize.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 29
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 65 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
I, Distressing God (1969)
Plot Summary:
Adolf (Miloš Kopecký), the irresistible seducer of women, is fond of Janicka (Hana Lelitová), a novice opera singer. The girl, however, prefers famous men and Adolf thus does not have a single chance with her. One day in a hospital, he meets a Greek partisan named Apostolek (Pavel Landovský) who impresses him with his spontaneity and ease in solving all problems, especially those with women. Adolf has an idea for a revenge. He makes Apostolek familiar with social manners, dresses him after the latest fashion and introduces him to Janicka as a Greek conductor. Janicka instantly falls in love with the made-up composer and Apostolek does no better.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 118
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: black comedy, dark comedy
Similar in 90%
The Rabbit Case (1980)
Plot Summary:
In an unusual, apolitical approach, director Jaromil Jires has fashioned a standard drama that features an older lawyer with failing health who goes to practice in the countryside. His series of odd court cases reveals more about the human condition than about law. In one of these litigations a wayward nephew has cheated his elderly aunt out of her savings. In court, the nephew insists the money was a gift, but his aunt explains she only gave him the money as a loan. Although the lawyer technically wins the case, everything of value seems lost in the meantime. His services are paid for in rabbits because the aunt has no currency, and in the end, the nephew cons his aunt into parting with her savings anyway. Other cases expose similar types of petty corruption.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 75
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 84%
Leaving (2011)
Plot Summary:
A bitter sweet comedy that follows a highly appointed Chancellor who set to step down from his position after years of service to his country. With just two last days left to enjoy his palatial villa before he is finally evicted, his situation gradually goes from bad to worse.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 234
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czech Republic
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: allegory
Similar in 87%
Those Wonderful Movie Cranks (1979)
Plot Summary:
Returning home to Prague, the magician Pasparte, an owner of a circus caravan, meets his dying colleague who entrusts his beautiful daughter Aloisie to his care. In Prague they all take up their lodgings at the house At Blue Fish in which they intend to arrange the programs. The firm is owned by widow Evzenie with whom Pasparte shares flat and bed. Evzenie is jealous of Aloisie therefore Pasparte sends Aloisie as a housewife to the single man Jakub Kolenatý who earns his living by photographing and wants to record the revived pictures of Prague. Pasparte wants to found in Prague the first permanent Czech movie theatre in which there would be projected also the original Czech films.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 295
Genere: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: surreal, metafiction
Similar in 79%
The Very Late Afternoon of a Faun (1983)
Plot Summary:
A bachelor named Faun with a Don Juan complex, seized with a hypochondriac's fear of the ineluctable approach of death, enters a race against time's passage. Faun's sexual love is imbued with the narcissistic vanity of a self-satisfied bacchant who even towards old age can't manage to forgo his lifelong pose as an irresistable seducer of women. He desperatly searches in superficial, fleeting sex.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 287
Genere: Comedy
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: black comedy
Similar in 89%
A Hoof Here, a Hoof There (1989)
Plot Summary:
Two friends have sex just for fun. One day they make a blood test, just for fun, and they discover that one of them has AIDS, not knowing who.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 231
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
The Cry (1964)
Plot Summary:
While a woman is in the hospital preparing to deliver her child, her husband has all day to reflect upon his wife and their relationship. As he tends to his job as a television repairman, Slavek fondly remembers how he first met Ivana and the days they spent getting to know one another. Slavek also grows increasingly aware of the environment that surrounds him and questions the society his new child will be entering. Loaded with a repeated plea for social change, this is the first feature from Czech writer/director Jaromil Jires.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 218
Genere: Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: freeze frame, non-linear
Similar in 90%
Gra (1969)
Plot Summary:
About an existentialist alienation drama between a bourgeois couple caught in a stationary environment. Between a man and a woman lost in themselves.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 67
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Short Working Day (1995)
Plot Summary:
Kieślowski’s study of a political strike, controversially told from the viewpoint of a Communist functionary trying to keep order.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 402
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 73 min
Plot tags: political drama
Similar in 85%
Sauna (1992)
Plot Summary:
A film based on a simple situation: several men talk in the sauna.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 141
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Barrier (1966)
Plot Summary:
A dream-like meditation on post-industrial life in Communist Poland.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 515
Genere: Drama, Comedy
Country: Poland
Duration: 77 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
Traps (1998)
Plot Summary:
After two troubled but powerful men rape a young hitchhiker who happens to be a vet, she drugs them and remove their testicles.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 488
Genere: Drama, Comedy
Country: Czech Republic
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: mind bending, psychedelic, surreal, dark comedy
Similar in 90%
All That Jack's (1980)
Plot Summary:
The staff of elementary school prepare the retirement party for their cleaning woman. The complicated relations within the school will emerge to the surface on the same night.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Yugoslavia
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: black comedy
Similar in 84%
It's Better to Be Healthy and Wealthy than Poor and Sick (1992)
Plot Summary:
A satiric tragi-comedy about two women and their lover Robert who is an emigrant that keeps coming back. This film shows chaotic post-communist Europe after the fall of totalitarianism. Two opposite characters, women, meet during the Velvet Revolution in November 1989. Intellectual dissident Nona and a Communist secret police boss’ mistress Ester. They meet at an anti-regime demonstration and become friends. They don’t want anything to do with politics, both want to get married and have kids, but also get rich. Crazy plans and risky attempts to realize their shared dreams land them in many sticky situations in the post-revolution chaos. Too much money gets in the way of the power of friendship.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 134
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
Marvelous and the Black Hole (2021)
Plot Summary:
A teenage delinquent befriends a surly magician who helps her navigate her inner demons and dysfunctional family with sleight of hand magic.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 81 min
Plot tags: light, captivating, entertaining
Similar in 89%
Kral Ubu (1996)
Plot Summary:
A cruel picture of the ways in which human beings acquire power and then cling to it. The story of Father Ubu, an idiot who climbs over the bodies of the dead to his royal post, is presented with a touch of the grotesque where naive comic elements meet black humor. Using a human touch, the film- makers were able to transform the original into a film aimed at a contemporary audience while remaining faithful to the vision of Father Ubu and Mother Ubu venturing everything in their efforts to seize power and mammon.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 146
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czech Republic
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: psychotronic, allegory, dark comedy, urban fantasy, campy
Similar in 84%
Larks on a String (1969)
Plot Summary:
Set in the late 1940s, the film concerns the treatment of suspect "bourgeois elements", a professor, a saxophonist, and a milkman, who are put to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, gloomy, intellectual, black comedy, banned
Similar in 80%
Shortcuts (1981)
Plot Summary:
Francin, manager of a small-town brewery, has a charming wife whose abundant blonde locks are an adornment to the town. Maryska looks ethereal but loves meat and beer, while Francin is an ascetic. The strict members of the brewery board of directors come to audit the accounts, but are diverted from concentrating on Francin's detailed reports by Maryska, who has organized a pig-killing feast and is ably assisting the butcher. When she invites the old curmudgeons on the board to enjoy the fresh pork, they are too happy to agree. Francin doesn't know whether he is going to get a permanent contract. To make things worse his brother Pepin - eccentric, noisy and garrulous - turns up on an indefinite visit.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 88%
Fever (1981)
Plot Summary:
The film is set in 1905, in a time of feverish revolutionary underground activity in Poland partitioned between three neighbours. All the characters are committed anarchists. The bomb maker puts an invention together to place it at the disposal of young inexperienced terrorists fighting against Tsarist oppression. The story follows the passing of this bomb from anarchist to anarchist as several attempts are made on the life of Tsarist governor general, until, at the end, it is effectively and harmlessly defused by a bomb expert. The presence of the bomb has a destroying effect on all of the Polish revolutionaries, they either die or breakdown.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 279
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Secluded, Near Woods (1976)
Plot Summary:
The Lavicka's, a Czech family from the city, rents a house in the country with the option to buy. However, old Mr Komarek seems reluctant to sell the house as they agreed.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Family
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Time of the Servants (1989)
Plot Summary:
Dana is young medical student with no self esteem, she can't deal with life, people and even not with herself. After her boyfriend leaves her, she changes to selfish woman, manipulating people and making them to serve her. She plays with her husband, neighbors and friends - for her own good and for fun.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 194
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: surprise ending
Similar in 89%
Pearls of the Deep (1965)
Plot Summary:
A manifesto of sorts for the Czech New Wave, this five-part anthology shows off the breadth of expression and the versatility of the movement’s directors. Based on stories by the legendary writer Bohumil Hrabal, the shorts range from the surreally chilling to the caustically observant to the casually romantic, but all have a cutting, wily view of the world.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 776
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: anthology, avant garde, tragicomedy, fairy tale
Similar in 81%
Black Peter (1964)
Plot Summary:
Reality movie of a few days in the life of a Czechoslovak teenager when he starts work.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, avant garde, sincere, realistic, contemplative, semi serious, biting, suspense
Similar in 90%
The Most Beautiful Age (1969)
Plot Summary:
An artist's studio is descended upon by a group of retired men and a young mother who agree to model in the nude for money. Comedy ensues as the students and the local bureaucracy react to the models, all in need of extra money. Several running gags border on slapstick as the officials and the students don't know what to do with the nude models.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 145
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
My Sweet Little Village (1985)
Plot Summary:
The movie's main storyline follows the life of Otík, a mentally retarded young man, in a tight-knit village community. The sweet-tempered Otík works as an assistant truck driver with Mr. Pávek, his older colleague and practical-minded neighbor. Pávek's family takes care of Otík, whose parents are dead. However, the two coworkers become at odds over Otík's inability to perform even the simplest tasks. Pávek demands that Otík be transferred to assist another driver, who happens to be a choleric and suspicious man named Turek (Turk in Czech). Rather than work with Turek, Otík decides to accept an offer of employment in Prague, but finds he does not fit in to the city life. After discovering that the transfer of Otík to Prague was a trick by a crooked politician to get a deal on Otík's large inherited house, Pávek agrees to give Otík a second chance and retrieves him from the city to resume their work together.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 75%
The Perfect Dinner (2022)
Plot Summary:
Based on a story by Stefano Sardo, The Perfect Dinner follows Carmine (Salvatore Esposito, Gomorrah series), a Neapolitan mafioso who isn’t cut out for the criminal life. Under the protection of his boss Pasquale (Gianfranco Gallo), Carmine is sent north to run a money laundering operation through a restaurant. He simply needs to defrost frozen meals, issue receipts and dinner is served. But everything changes when he meets Consuelo (Greta Scarano), a chef who always pursues perfection and dreams of winning a Michelin star. Carmine hires her and decides to transform the establishment into a high-end restaurant. Could the love for food and dream of winning a Michelin star give them both a second chance?.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 725
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, satirical, disturbing
Similar in 82%
The Teacher (2016)
Plot Summary:
The principal of an elementary school calls a special parents meeting after it’s alleged that the seemingly empathetic and kindly-looking teacher Mrs. Drazděchová uses her students to manipulate their parents.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Slovakia, Czech Republic
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: touching, melancholic, tense, captivating, dark comedy, allegory, non-linear
Similar in 86%
A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966)
Plot Summary:
In Jan Němec’s surreal fable, a picnic is rudely transformed into a lesson in political hierarchy when a handful of mysterious authority figures show up. This allegory about oppression and conformity was banned in its home country but became an international success after it premiered at the New York Film Festival.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 71 min
Plot tags: dark comedy, cult classic, mind bending, psychedelic, spiritual, surreal, crying, allegory, weird