Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59731 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-03-01
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Colour, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 99 minutes

Customer Reviews

To Be Or Not To Be
To Be Or Not To Be is one of cinema's greatest comedies. After more than sixty years Ernst Lubitsch's satirical propaganda can still stand proudly against such belly-laugh producing classics as Duck Soup and Some Like It Hot.
Jack Benny and Carole Lombard are Joseph and Maria Tura, Warsaw's leading theatrical couple, whose troup are caught up in a plot against the occupying Nazis. As propaganda, To Be Or Not To Be depicts the Nazis as either cold, calculating monsters or, as is the case with Sig Ruman's Col. Earhardt, incompetant buffoons;"So they call me Concentration Camp Earhardt ?"
This film is a riotous joy from start to finish with Lombard all sensuous sophistication, Benny all irascible tirades and ascerbic asides, and director Lubitsch sending up the evil of Nazism in the cruellest, funniest, and most effective way.

Ernst Lubitsch goes after the Nazis in this 1942 farce
"To Be or Not to Be" has the distinction of being the last movie starring Carole Lombard before her tragic death in an airplane crash in 1942 and is also remembered as having Jack Benny's finest film performance. But beyond the qualities of the stars Ernst Lubitsch's film deserves to be singled out for its anti-Nazis position, a distinction shared with Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" and few other films. Keep in mind that the film was released on February 15, 1942, not only a month after Lombard's death but only two months after Pearl Harbor, which means it was in the works before the United States entered World War II.

Lubitsch and Melchior Lengyel came up with the story, which was turned into a screenplay by Edwin Justus Mayer. The story of "To Be or Not to Be" is of a Polish theatrical company that is in Warsaw preparing to perform an anti-Nazi melodrama on the eve of World War II. In the leading roles are the husband and wife team of Maria (Lombard) and Joseph Tura (Benny), who are trained in Shakespeare. However, the production is canceled by the Polish government because they are afraid Germany will attack the country is a play critical of the Nazis goes on (you know how touchy Hitler can be). So the Turas put on "Hamlet" instead and while Joseph does Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy, Maria is visited backstage by Lieutenant Stanislav Sobinski (Robert Stack), a young pilot in the Polish Air Force. Then the war breaks out, Sobinski makes it to London to fight with the RAF, and the Turas remain in occupied Warsaw.

While in London Sobinski meets with Professor Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), a Nazi agent posing as a Polish patriot, who gets the names of friends and relatives from the pilots. Sobinski becomes suspicious and is sent to Warsaw to recover the list from Siletsky before he gives it to the Nazis. In Warsaw Maria helps Sobinski, but then she is arrested by the Gestapo as Siletsky tries to get her to join the Third Reich. To rescue his wife Joseph and the other actors masquerade as Nazi soldiers and end up with one of them (Tom Duggan) dressing up as Hitler to help in the great escape.

This is a comedy, but it is not a broad comedy in which the whole thing descends into slapstick, otherwise the overt attempts at anti-Nazi propaganda would not work. There is a similarity between "To Be or Not to Be" and the television situation comedy "Hogan's Heroes," in terms of presenting the Nazis as incompetent buffoons, personified by Sig Ruman as Colonel Ehrhardt. The difference is that Lubitsch still manages to work in the idea that the Nazis are also killer clowns. However, the biggest joke is that these actors, less than inspiring on the stage in Shakespeare, are so convincing playing Nazis. Meanwhile, Joseph cannot quite bring himself to belief that Maria is actually cheating on him.

Keep in mind that when this film was made "concentration camps" did not mean what they mean today; the terms was used by the United States to describe the camps in which Japanese-Americans were interred during the war. But then when you see Jack Benny walk in as a Nazi you know this is a different time and place. The humor is pretty coarse for a film from the early Forties (e.g., Ehrhardt recalls Joseph's performance of "Hamlet" and declares, "What he did to Shakespeare we are doing to Poland"), but then keep in mind who is being made fun of here and you have to admire the bite that they put into some of these bits. Benny is pretty much perfect for this part and Lombard sparkles throughout. As is usually the case, the original is much better than the 1983 remake with the husband and wife team of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft.

"They made a brandy out of Napoleon and a herring out of Bismarck, and Hitler will end up as a piece of cheese!"
When you can crack jokes at the Gestapo in Poland only a few months after Germany has declared war on you, you've either created something brave and funny or something a little too sensitive...as when Colonel Ehrhardt of the Gestapo refers to the great Polish actor and ham, Josef Tura, "Oh, yes. As a matter of fact I saw him on the stage when I was in Warsaw once before the war. What he did to Shakespeare we are doing to Poland."

Or when Josef Tura, now disguised as Colonel Ehrhardt, says to the traitor, Professor Siletsky, "I can't tell you how delighted we are to have you here." "May I say, my dear Colonel, that it's good to breathe the air of the Gestapo again," Siletsky replies. "You know, you're quite famous in London, Colonel. They call you Concentration Camp Ehrhardt." "Yes, yes," Tura as Ehrhardt says with a laugh, "we do the concentrating and the Poles do the camping."

To Be or Not To Be did make some uneasy when it was released. But it succeeded at being very funny, especially in the last half when all the plot devices kick in, and in being a marvelously sophisticated and poignant attack on Nazism. It takes place in Warsaw in 1939. Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) and his wife, Maria (Carole Lombard) are leading actors of the Polish theater. They have started rehearsals for a satiric comedy about the Nazis when the government tells them to stop; it's too risky. So they save the fake Gestapo uniforms and mount a performance of Hamlet. While Josef Tura may be a conceited actor, his wife is a luscious, talented actress who enjoys entertaining attractive young men. The signal for the chosen fellow to leave the audience and join her in her dressing room is when Tura walks downstage, pauses, and begins "To be or not to be..." This time the young man is Polish pilot Lt. Stansilav Sobinski (Robert Stack). "Tell me about yourself," Maria asks while they lounge. "Well, there isn't much to tell. I just fly a bomber," the lieutenant says. "Oh, how perfectly thrilling!" "I don't know about it being thrilling. But it's quite a bomber. You might not believe it, but I can drop three tons of dynamite in two minutes." "Really?," Maria says. "Does that interest you?" he asks. "It certainly does," she says, with a gleam in her eye.

Days later the Germans invade, the lieutenant escapes to London to fly with the RAF's Polish Corps, the Turas close the theater and the Gestapo take charge. But when the Polish traitor Siletsky makes his way from London to Warsaw with a list of the Polish underground, Lieutenant Sobinski returns to try to stop him. Through complications fast, farcical and complicated, Joseph Tura winds up playing both Ehrhardt and Siletsky and Maria Tura proves vital to saving her husband on more than one occasion. The Tura theatrical troupe hatch a plot that involves Hitler and the mothballed Gestapo uniforms to save the underground, to steal a plane and to escape from Warsaw to London. It all is clever and complicated, and it sticks both fingers in the eyes of the Nazis. Says one character, "They made a brandy out of Napoleon and a herring out of Bismarck, and Hitler will end up as a piece of cheese!"

Benny does a wonderful job as Tura...so full of ham, so conceited...and when he has to be, so resourceful, so brave in spite of himself. Carole Lombard matches him as Maria Tura (and was top billed). Maria may have no illusions about her husband (and she may be almost as much of a ham as he), but she loves him, she's smart, she's clever. Probably only Lubitsch at that time would have dared to make a comedy involving Hitler. But To Be or Not To Be is really a comedy about freedom and bravery. Lubitsch doesn't forget that laughter can often inspire more effectively than melodrama. And at the end, when Josef Tura finally gets his chance to play Hamlet before a British audience and reaches the line, "To be or not to be," the look on Benny's face is priceless as a British soldier leaves his seat and starts heading backstage. Lt. Sobinski looks almost as dumbfounded as Tura.

The DVD looks very good. It features a comedy short with Benny and a WWII promo for buying war bonds. Mel Brooks in 1986 remade the movie as a loving homage to Lubitsch. The Lubitsch version, in my view, is lighter, funnier and more effective, but the Brooks version has many good points. It's entirely possible to enjoy both, and I do. As a side note, this was Carole Lombard's last movie. Shortly after filming was completed, she was killed in a plane crash during a war bonds tour.