Hollywood was never as disciplined and unlikely to ruffle any feathers as during its Classic era. And this rigid state of affairs was even more rigid after the United States entered the Second World War, when filmmakers had to contend not only with the prudishness of the Hays Code but also with official government censorship and the needs of wartime propaganda. This, however, didn’t mean that some films made during such a period couldn’t cause controversy. One of the first examples was To Be or Not to Be, a 1942 spy comedy directed by Ernst Lubitsch, which is now considered one of the finest films of its time.

The plot begins in the Polish capital city of Warsaw in August 1939, shortly before the beginning of the Second World War. Joseph Tura (played by Jack Benny) is a hammy stage actor who leads a small troupe, apparently unaware that his glamorous wife, popular actress Maria Tura (played by Carole Lombard), has many admirers. These include Lt. Stanislav Sobinski (played by Robert Stack), a young and dashing military aviator who visits her room whenever Joseph Tura, while playing Hamlet on stage, delivers the line “To be or not to be”. Joseph Tura believes that Sobinski’s sudden disappearance from the audience has something to do with the quality of his performance. There are more pressing matters at hand after the Germans invade and occupy Poland. Sobinski has managed to escape to Britain and join a Polish squadron within the Royal Air Force. One day, he and other airmen are contacted by Professor Alexander Siletsky (played by Stanley Ridges), a top member of the Polish resistance who volunteers to send their messages to loved ones when he returns to occupied Poland during a top-secret mission. After he departs, Siletsky is revealed to be a Nazi double agent. Sobinski volunteers to fly over Poland and be parachuted in order to try to prevent Siletsky from delivering a list of top resistance members to Colonel Erhardt (played by Sig Ruman), the bumbling commander of the Gestapo in Warsaw. Sobinski would get in touch with Maria Tura but would also have to rely on the help of her husband, who, like many of his colleagues, would use his acting skills for a noble patriotic cause.

Made shortly after the USA had entered the war and while Poland was still occupied by Nazi Germany, To Be or Not to Be was met with hostility by many critics and commentators who considered it inappropriate to use the increasingly bloody conflict as a setting for a light and, at times, farcical comedy. However, if there was one person who could make it work, it was Ernst Lubitsch, a director known for his knack for light comedy and his famous “Lubitsch touch”. Three years earlier in Ninotchka, Lubitsch had shown how he could turn the serious and complicated subject of politics into effective satire and entertaining comedy, as well as transform Greta Garbo into a prime comedienne. In this particular case, Lubitsch had based almost the entire film around Jack Benny, a vaudeville entertainer and comedian who was at the time best known for his work on radio and who would later become a great star of television sitcoms. Benny was, by all accounts, terrified when delivering his first (and only) major film role. Lubitsch was very good at guiding him to deliver one of the finest comedic performances of Classic Hollywood. Benny’s work was complemented by Carole Lombard, one of Classic Hollywood’s greatest comediennes, whose tragic death in an air crash a month before the premiere cast a great shadow over the film. The rest of the cast is also very good, especially Sig Ruman as a buffoonish Nazi officer and Stanley Ridges as a much more intelligent and dangerous villain. Young Robert Stack, who got the role due to his friendship with Lombard and who would later become famous as Elliott Ness in The Untouchables, is easily overshadowed by his older colleagues. The most memorable of the supporting roles belongs to Felix Bressart, an actor who plays an obviously Jewish actor named Greenberg and who dreams of playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, even delivering his monologue in some of the most moving scenes of the film.

The character of Greenberg is as close as To Be or Not to Be came to addressing the plight of Jews in Poland and in territories under Nazi rule. At the time, information about what was really happening there was still sketchy, and Lubitsch, just like Chaplin in the case of The Great Dictator, probably couldn’t imagine or grasp the true horrors of the Holocaust. What he shows of Poland is bad enough, with bombed-out streets and countless references to Poland’s population being subjected to various deprivations, humiliations, concentration camps, and summary executions. Lubitsch treads carefully between some really dark scenes, which could work in straight thrillers (and one of them features a killing quite graphic for 1940s Hollywood standards), anti-Nazi propaganda, and genuine farce. His brilliance is in portraying hammy actors as persons who could use their skills for a noble cause and provide what could, under the circumstances, work as a happy ending. To Be or Not to Be was solid but not a particularly big hit, but its reputation grew with time and is now considered one of the best comedies of its time. In 1983, Mel Brooks produced a rather disappointing eponymous remake.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)

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