chenxiaomao
Is difficult to imagine is that comedy so at ease, without the exaggerated facial expressions and movements jokingly, completely just script operation, distinctive characters show and the storyline of the conflicting collision out a very exciting laugh, or a fine sense of humor and amusing humor. Let me think later "La Grande Vadrouille" in the group play interspersed and coincidence echoes. As amazing actor, hapless Colonel, loyal soldiers, war machine heartbeat.Revisit the classic comedy, from beginning to end immersed in the plot to create out of the atmosphere of joy, the director of the comedy elements with effortless, structure, lines, performing, narrative and music and drama are called perfect, textbook style comedy film.
gavin6942
During the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.Ernst Lubitsch writes, produces and directs this satire of Nazi Germany. Putting it alongside Charles Chaplin's "The Dictator", this is a very powerful film because of its timing. Released in 1942, at the height of World War II, when anyone could have won... very brave to make a film of this sort.Lubitsch, a man who inspired the likes of Billy Wilder and Mel Brooks, never had his equal. Perhaps not the most well-known creator, he ought to be. With films like this, he was a true treasure.
SnoopyStyle
It's 1939. Husband and wife, Joseph (Jack Benny) and Maria Tura (Carole Lombard), are theater stars. He's a self-obsessed diva and she has an admirer in bomber pilot Lieut. Stanislav Sobinski (Robert Stack). After the German invasion, Sobinski is in England. He meets Professor Siletsky who is going back to Poland. Everybody gives him family and friends names to send greetings to. Sobinski is suspicious when he doesn't know who Maria Tura is. Before Sobinski could tell the higher ups, he's gone back and Sobinski is sent after him.This is a suspenseful thriller with some jokes thrown in. The remake is funnier and jokier. This one still has the funniest line "Heil myself". Mel Brooks makes walking out on "To be or not to be" much funnier than Jack Benny. Jack is less outrageous than Mel. This one is just more of a spy action movie being shown right in the middle of the war. It does struggle with the tone as it keeps going back to the big laughs with Jack Benny. It's a battle between the dark serious subject matter and Jack Benny trying to ham it up.
MisterWhiplash
To Be or Not to Be is a film that carries the real horror and dread of Europe facing the threats and devastation of Hitler and the Nazis, and never forgets that, but is also a light, screwball comedy about the art of performance and the enjoyment we all get knowing someone is getting something over on another guy. Lubtisch's filmmaking and comic timing moves like a precise slab of butter (if that's a weird analogy), smooth and on point all the time.It follows a Polish theater company that see a the Germans invading, bombing their town, and the two stars of the company played by Jack Benny and Carole Lumbard, embroiled in a plot with a Nazi-leaning professor and even going up to Hitler himself. Nevermind they don't have Polish (or even most German) accents, they don't bother pretending on that front ironically considering the trickery on hand. This is meant to be a piece of world war two theatricality that can and does endure because it deals with showmanship, actor ego (from Benny with his Hamlet to the side characters trying to get Shylock just right) and playing a character as it's main focus (if there's any modern film that owes It's debt to Lubitsch and how people put on ruses in such high stakes it's Inglouious Basterds, down to a climax in a theater full of Nazis).And as funny as Jack Benny is, especially when his character reacts to that dear of a bomber pilot who has the hots for Carole Lombard, I think Lombard really makes this even better than expected. She's exquisite, ferocious, precocious, sexy, and yet terribly serious about her craft and the people she loves, plus the theater itself. You see just charm and grace radiating off her, and yet she completely gets how to make Mary always reacting and figuring things out. Benny is the big wonderful goof of the movie, while Lombard is the star.Its sublime entertainment and I only regret not seeing it sooner; Mel Brooks made a remake in the 80s which is good but nowhere near the impact of this picture. Just the scene with the Germans marching into town and Lubitsch's cut aways to the citizens looking on in shocked-but-passive disbelief makes it a must see alone.
AD
