Fun with Fascist Dictators II: Shakespearean Edition
On paper it shouldn’t work. A comedy about the Nazi occupation of Poland set while the occupation was still happening? Jokes with references to concentration camps? Jack Benny versus Nazis?
And yet, To Be Or Not To Be is one of the funniest comedies of its era, and certainly one of the most audacious. The great Ernst Lubitsch walks an incredibly fine line, yet always makes the right choices, creating an unlikely hybrid: the anti-fascist screwball sex comedy.
Starring Jack Benny as a vain Shakespearean actor and Carole Lombard as his actress wife, To Be Or Not To Be is one of the most elegantly scripted films imaginable; there are simply no throwaway lines. As critic Geoffrey O’Brien notes, “Almost no line of dialogue is without a barbed secondary implication; jokes comment knowingly on the jokes that preceded them, adding elements of ironic awareness too discreetly and rapidly for a single viewing to suffice.”
The plot finds a Warsaw theater company drawn into conflict when the Nazis invade Poland. Brought into the resistance thanks to Lombard’s infatuation with a handsome soldier (Robert Stack) who joins her backstage every time her husband starts Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, the actors put their stash of Nazi uniforms to good use by impersonating Nazi officers—and even Hitler himself—to uncover a spy in their midst.
The brilliant film remains a high-water mark of American comedy, propelled by the radiant Lombard. Sadly, this was her last film; she died in a plane crash prior to its release.