To Be or Not to Be

To Be or Not to Be; comedy, USA, 1942; D: Ernst Lubitsch, S: Jack Benny, Carole Lombard, Robert Stack, Stanley Bridges, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill

Warsaw, '39. Hitler is carelessly walking through the streets. But it's not Hitler, just a Polish actor who came out of the local theater in order to convince the director how he resembles the dictator so much that he will scare off passerbys. But the play gets forbidden and now only "Hamlet" is performed there, played by Joseph Tura. Every time when he starts his monologue "To Be or Not to Be", soldier Stanislav disappears in order to seduce his wife, Maria Tura. But then World War II starts and Germans occupy the capital, forcing Stanislav to flee to London. Yet he quickly returns in order to stop Professor Siletsky, a Nazi spy who wants to smuggle a list of Resistance workers. Joseph disguises himself as a Nazi and takes his list away. The Professor realizes the deceit, so they kill him. Joseph thus disguises himself as the Professor, so the actors are forced to save him from the Gestapo headquarters. Joseph and Maria, together with the actor playing Hitler, manage to board a plane and save themselves in London.

Excellent comedy "To Be or Not to Be", with an ingeniously simple idea of disguise and acting in order to get out of any problem, is besides Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" the biggest (and most actual) Hollywood commentary on the Nazi dictatorship back then, and on the ideologies of dictatorships in general. The whole film is masterfully simple directed by Ernst Lubitsch, equipped with his trademark "Lubitsch touch", wonderfully played by everyone involved, including the actress Carole Lombard, while almost every single controversial moment is handled with unbelievable measure and wisdom. It all starts with the voice of the narrator, full of irony: "Lubinski, Kubinski...We're in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Europe is still at peace", while the highlights start already with the scene of an actor playing Hitler, announcing: "I salute myself".

The story obviously has sympathy for the Resistance workers who fight against their country being occupied by irredentists and annexationists, yet Lubitsch treats both their plight with respect and finds room for numerous comical dialogues ("If I shouldn't come back, I forgive you what happened between you and Sobinski. But if I come back, it's a different matter!"; "Well, Colonel, all I can say is... you can't have your cake and shoot it, too."). The best twist is probably the scene where actor Joseph disguises himself as the Nazi Professor, not knowing that the Nazis already discovered the real Professor is already dead: in order to spice up the situation, they put him in the same room with the corpse of the Professor (!), but Joseph even finds a way to get out of this pinch, by disputing even this situation. The finale, with one of the actors disguising themselves as Hitler (!) in order to ensure his entire group to board a plane and escape, is unbelievable, equipped with already now classic joke where this fake Hitler asks the two Nazi pilots to jump off the plane, which they simply do. Rarely has there ever been a movie that goes so over the top, plays with the controversial and pushes the envelope so far, and yet always stays within class and good taste throughout. Like a real satire, "To Be or Not to Be" doesn't mock a nation or specific people, but just their wrong beliefs and misguided policies, not managing to be completely hilarious as it wants to, and even has dramatic moments, inspiring a whole bunch of Nazi satires, most of which were simply half a century too late to have any sharpness as this gem.

Grade:+++