84. To Be or Not to Be

Ernst Lubitsch, 1942

Ernst Lubitsch's original To Be or Not to Be, as opposed to the remake starring, but not directed by, Mel Brooks, is one of the great, rarely seen comedies of the forties. That is not to say that people haven't seen it or heard of it, but that it seems rarely seen any more. The film stars the incomparable Jack Benny, in what is doubtless his best screen role, playing a variation on his egotistical actor character, perfected week in and week out on his radio show. Here, Benny is a Polish actor named Joseph Tura, who finds himself at the head of a company performing Hamlet at the outbreak of the second World War. Of course, Benny considers himself to be the greatest actor in the world and, as is usually the case with him, much of the film's comedy comes from watching his fellow actors, his audience, and even the Nazi party take the mickey out of him, so to speak. Benny's wife in the film is played by Carole Lombard, who has a secret admirer in the form of American flyer Robert Stack. Several of the film's funniest moments come as Benny launches into Hamlet's most famous monologue, "To be or not to be. . ." This, we are told, is the finest monologue any actor can play and Benny the finest to play it. It is hilarious then to watch Benny's face contort in indignation and confusion as Stack gets up only a few lines into the monologue, pressing his way past the others in his row, time and again. The meat of the film comes with the Nazi occupation of Poland and a complicated plot that involves Benny posing a Nazi scientist. Watching Benny try to bluff his way through a meeting with an oafish Nazi officer is hilarious, but the appearance of the real scientist's dead body and Benny's reaction to it is sheer genius.

This is probably my favorite film from Ernst Lubitsch, a director whose work I have only recently begun to know, but which I have also enjoyed in The Shop Around the Corner, Trouble in Paradise, and That Lady in Ermine. Lubitsch has a knack for crafting comedies that are at all times clever, human, and, above all, charming. They are usually set in out of the way foreign corners of the world (admittedly To Be or Not to Be is not the best example of this; the charming European village setting for The Shop Around the Corner, however, exemplifies the idea perfectly) and frequently mix hilarious sequences with charming romance and bittersweet humanity. Here, the comedy of remarriage style romance of Benny and Lombard is quite good, but, for me, the best, most human, most heartbreaking moment comes in the form of one of the film's supporting characters. Rawitch, played by character actor Lionel Atwill, is a quiet, older man, a Jewish supporting player in Tura's company. It is his fondest wish to play Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and to utter those famous lines, "If you prick us, do we not bleed? Tickle us, do we not laugh?" The point in the film in which Rawitch gets his chance, acting as a willing distraction to keep a group of Nazi soldiers from noticing the Turas is unspeakably heartwarming and heartbreaking.