To Be Or Not To Be

Back in high school, one of my friends told me I should watch this movie, but I kept putting it off because the premise seemed strange (see below). I understand why my friend thought I would like To Be of Not To Be: I love Shakespeare. I love 40s comedies. And (until this movie) I particularly like the 40s director Ernst Lubitsch, who directed one of my favorite movies, Ninotchka, as well as The Shop Around the Corner, the sweet little movie on which You've Got Mail was based. So I'm a bit sad to report that To Be or Not To Be actually creeped me out more than entertained me. I don't think it means to be a black comedy, but this is by far one of the darkest I've seen.

Don't get me wrong. The actors are great. Jack Benny is very funny, and Carole Lombard is the definition of a star: luminescent and radiant. But I just couldn't get over the fact of this movie: a 1942 film about the Nazi occupation of Poland. Basically, the story revolves around a Polish theater troupe in Warsaw that gets sucked into high espionage when a star struck young bomber pilot in England accidentally asks a German spy to get a message to the woman he loves -- actress Maria Tura, played by Carole Lombard. The pilot finds out that the spy has information that will destroy the Polish Underground, along with all of the Resistance movement in Eastern Europe. And so he flies back to Poland to intercept the spy. In the process, Maria Tura, her hammish actor husband (played by Jack Benny), and the rest of the troupe go through hijinx galore to save Poland, the Resistance, and their own skins. Jack Benny wears a false beard and losing a mustache out the window of a car, while Carole Lombard seduces no less than three Gestapo officials within the span of 24 hours. There's a comedy routine with a corpse. A bit player dresses up as Hitler with a little mustache and fools about two dozen Gestapo guards into following him and deserting the real Hitler. Seriously, folks??

The hardest part about this movie is that, because it was made in 1942, it couldn't give a conclusive ending. Who knew who was really going to win? Instead, a few good people make it out of mainland Europe and on a plane to England. Not exactly a triumphant ending. I'm sure Lubitsch -- a German-born Jew -- could not have thought that comedy alone could mask the uncomfortable task of making a movie about the Polish occupation while Poland was still occupied. Several times throughout the movie, a bit player in the troupe (played by one of my favorite Lubitsch regulars, Felix Bressart) who dreams one day of playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice keeps reciting the "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" speech. It's always a poignant speech, and Lubitsch lets its emotional weight come through each time, right before cutting away to more slapstick. It's a strange juxtaposition that echoes the even stranger juxtaposition of the movie itself, which played in theaters along with news reels about the realities of concentration camps and the war in Europe. The thought of this movie being made when the outcome of World War II was still uncertain is flabbergasting to me -- the movie is incredibly brave to treat the Nazis with such derision as well as humor, but also massively strange and unsettling if you didn't know the third act would end out all right, as it were.

In the end, I could never get over the oddity of the movie to actually enjoy it. Slapstick comedies are supposed to be heart-warming, or escapist, or something, not awkward and macabre as this one is. When it's ill-timed, laughter is not the best medicine.

2 stars -- good but falling far short of delightful.