To Be or Not to Be (1942)
A theatre troupe in Warsaw becomes involved in espionage and spy work against the Nazis, completely by accident, and screwball comedy somehow ensues off of that.
Right off the bat comes a warning from Lady Picture Show, there are a lot of super cringey jokes about Nazis and concentration camps. They are cringey now because they seem flippant, but it’s important to remember that this was being filmed before the US was even in the war (when a lot of movies were avoiding talking about the Nazis entirely) and concentration camps were not yet extermination camps, though were still awful enough that I’m sure the jokes about them weren’t considered in good taste at the time either. This information in mind, I definitely still cringed at stuff like the actor lookalike for Hitler thinking it’s funny to go “Heil me!”, but yes, with hindsight a lot of stuff they likely wouldn’t have been so irreverent about comes off as callous, instead of just clueless at how bad everyone was going to let this whole mess get.
That said, yes, if you took a drink every time someone in this movie says Heil Hitler, you will get quite snookered. Irreverence is definitely the name of the game behind that. Because while other movies of the time and since may have been making Nazis out to be the mustache-twirling uber villain, this one wants to make sure you know that it thinks they are dumb. Very very dumb. Very status obsessed. Very matter of fact about their own cruelty. Very obsequious towards anyone that they think they need to impress. Very unquestioning. “Obliging fellows” being one of my favorite laugh lines as a couple of Nazi pilots are tricked into falling to their doom.
Ernst Lubitsch, himself a German of Jewish ancestry, though he’d lef tthe country back in the 1920s was clearly not trying to paint the Nazis in an unthreatening light. Far from it, even as the screwball lines pile on top of each other, the movie wants to make sure that you get that the Polish characters are legitimately and deeply affected by what they see happening to their country and its people. The fact that as part of his ruse to trick the Nazis into thinking that he has the identities of resistance leaders, Josef Toura (Jack Benny) namechecks the people who have been shot shows that for all his put-ons of caring only about his own reviews, he’s aware of what is going on in the streets and alleys of his city.
Yes the flick alternates between being a dark comedy about Nazi invaders and being a send-up (albeit a much more loving one) of show business: its narcissism, its fake gosh folksy authenticity and its obsession with adoration. The two ideas are definitely played off of each other and I was kind of astonished at all the levels of meta that this movie got to while still outwardly seeming so innocently screwball. It definitely seemed like the cry of an artist who wanted to use one kind of charlatanry (art, theater) to overthrow a far more malevolent one. It had that prankster element, a reminder that jesters can speak truth to power, but also points out that what both the Nazis and the theater troop have in common is that they are telling a story that is mostly set-dressing. So the solution at the heart of the piece, is to tell a story to trick your oppressors into making obvious the ineffective asses that they are.
Oh, plus also there’s the usual ridiculous fast-talking, farcical plot twists, and Carole Lombard mugging and being magnificent. Plus after thinking repeatedly that Mel Brooks probably loves this movie I found out he remade it, and the end of Inglorious Basterds is heavily homaging it so it’s kind of like movie homework, without actually being a lot of work.
This flick was available at the NYPL. Lady Picture Show recommends having a beer while watching it so you stop being paranoid that your roommate will think you’re watching Nazi propaganda.
