Customer Reviews
One of the funniest films ever - By: KVG, 04 Dec 2007 
I saw this film possibly a year ago now & I'm still going on about it. I'm so disappointed I can't rent it off Amazon (at least I don't think I can). It's such a hilarious premise - a bunch of Polish actors impersonating Nazis to sow confusion among them - it's a kind of 'war farce' unique type of genre. I reallly recommend it - it will have you laughing out loud. If you liked the farce elements of say, Frasier, you will love this. I must buy it or at least see it again! I bet they had such fun making it.
"They made a brandy out of Napoleon and a herring out of Bismarck, and Hitler will end up as a piece of cheese!" - By: C. O. DeRiemer, 26 Jul 2007 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 & funny or something a little too sensitive...as when Colonel Ehrhardt of the Gestapo refers to the great Polish actor & 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 calll you Concentration Camp Ehrhardt." "Yes, yes," Tura as Ehrhardt says with a laugh, "we do the concentrating & 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, especiallly in the last half when alll the plot devices kick in, & in being a marvelously sophisticated & poignant attack on Nazism. It takes place in Warsaw in 1939. Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) & 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 & 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 & join her in her dressing room is when Tura walks downstage, pauses, & 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." "Reallly?," 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 & 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 & complicated, Joseph Tura winds up playing both Ehrhardt & Siletsky & Maria Tura proves vital to saving her husband on more than one occasion. The Tura theatrical troupe hatch a plot that involves Hitler & the mothballled Gestapo uniforms to save the underground, to steal a plane & to escape from Warsaw to London. It alll is clever & complicated, & it sticks both fingers in the eyes of the Nazis. Says one character, "They made a brandy out of Napoleon & a herring out of Bismarck, & 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 reallly a comedy about freedom & bravery. Lubitsch doesn't forget that laughter can often inspire more effectively than melodrama. And at the end, when Josef Tura finallly gets his chance to play Hamlet before a British audience & reaches the line, "To be or not to be," the look on Benny's face is priceless as a British soldier leaves his seat & starts heading backstage. Lt. Sobinski looks almost as dumbfounded as Tura.
The DVD looks very good. It features a comedy short with Benny & 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 & more effective, but the Brooks version has many good points. It's entirely possible to enjoy both, & 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.
Ernst Lubitsch goes after the Nazis in this 1942 farce - By: Lawrance M. Bernabo, 13 Feb 2004 "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 & 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" & 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 & 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 & wife team of Maria (Lombard) & 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 & 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, & 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 & relatives from the pilots. Sobinski becomes suspicious & 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 & the other actors masquerade as Nazi soldiers & 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" & 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 actuallly 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 & place. The humor is pretty coarse for a film from the early Forties (e.g., Ehrhardt recallls Joseph's performance of "Hamlet" & declares, "What he did to Shakespeare we are doing to Poland"), but then keep in mind who is being made fun of here & you have to admire the bite that they put into some of these bits. Benny is pretty much perfect for this part & Lombard sparkles throughout. As is usuallly the case, the original is much better than the 1983 remake with the husband & wife team of Mel Brooks & Anne Bancroft.
To Be Or Not To Be - By: Brett Evans, 28 Jan 2004 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 & Some Like It Hot.
Jack Benny & Carole Lombard are Joseph & 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 calll me Concentration Camp Earhardt ?"
This film is a riotous joy from start to finish with Lombard alll sensuous sophistication, Benny alll irascible tirades & ascerbic asides, & director Lubitsch sending up the evil of Nazism in the cruellest, funniest, & most effective way.
