Review of To Be or Not to Be (1983) by Jason M — 07 Feb 2013

Never, I repeat, never, have I seen a film that was both as funny and smart as Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be.

Set in WWII Nazi-occupied Warsaw, it follows the adventures of a theater ensemble that gets involved with Polish underground activity.

Carole Lombard plays the female lead Maria Tura in probably the best performance of an actress I've ever seen from this era. Strong female roles, where women not only function as accessories are rare in pre-60s cinema and she nails it.

So does her in-film husband Jack Benny who is as narcissistic as it gets and believes he's the best of all Shakespearean actors (he can pull off a pretty convicing Gestapo officer and German double agent as well), but Lombard outplays even him.

Anyways, the film won me over with the incredible amount of detail in dialogue and the whole production, starting with the Polish name signs in the first scene, up to the scene where an actor, posing as an assassin recites Shylock's monologue from The Merchant of Venice in front of a group of SS-soldiers and other actors posing as Hitler and his staff. There are a lot of scenes like that, and this is what made this film so wonderful.

To Be or Not to Be challenges Chinatown for the best movie script I've ever seen, not only does it feature sharp dialogue and funny one-liners but so many twists and changes of perspective, it can only be attributed to the director's enormous skill that we don't get lost in it.

I can't wait to see more from Lubitsch, I bet he has some more masterpieces in his resumee.