‎To Be or Not to Be (1942) directed by Ernst Lubitsch • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

To Be or Not to Be

1942 Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

During the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.

Carole Lombard Jack Benny Robert Stack Felix Bressart Lionel Atwill Stanley Ridges Sig Ruman Tom Dugan Charles Halton Henry Victor Maude Eburne

99 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 2

87/100

A proud, important joke mixed and matched for an hour and a half, but when its subject is so sinister and its execution so multifaceted in delivery and tone balances, it doesn't really matter that each comedic springboard is built off of the same root feelings of anger and frustration. Ernst Lubitsch is pissed off but entirely confident in his storytelling, never relenting from harsh realities but still sly enough to make a smile and a tear one and the same. If any one moment shifted towards the absurd, Lubitsch would dial it back for a more humane, grounded segment, and in a few sections, he even shook the two flavors and moods together for an unpredictable end result…
Review by Jake Cole ★★★★½ 1

"So they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt, eh?"
Review by Dragonknight ★★★★½ 2

Film #9 of Project 40

”They named a brandy after Napoleon, they made a herring out of Bismarck, and the Fuhrer is going to end up as a piece of cheese!”

This is how it should be done. Every now and then you find a movie that you can watch over and over without getting tired or bored, for me To Be or Not To Be is one of those films. A charming and delightful little comedy from Ernst Lubitsch set in the Nazi occupied Warsaw which makes fun of Nazis better than any other satire, honors actors who are passionately working to bring us lively theaters and like other Lubitsch movies bombards us with polished, highly amusing and elegant…
Review by RetroHound ★★★★★

It opens in Poland, 1939. What the heck!? I thought this was a comedy! In fact, it is, and the first 5 minutes are the funniest opening of a movie I've seen in a long time.

Jack Benny and Carol Lombard are husband and wife actors. She is flattered by the attention of a young pilot. They arrange to meet while her husband does the "To be or not to be" monologue from Hamlet. Then the Germans invade and they end up involved in a plot by the Germans to discover information about the Polish underground. This gives the actors many times to test their abilities while providing Benny with opportunities to discover information about his wife's fidelity.

Right now it's free on a website called ShoutFactory. Very witty, highly recommended, and not to be missed.
Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 2

87

"Well, Colonel, all I can say is... you can't have your cake and shoot it, too."
Review by Peter Labuza ★★★★

A play with "political consequences"
By laughing in the face of tyranny.
Dictator as delicatessen.

Was worried going in that after Ninotchka left me baffled that I might never find the "Lubitstch touch," but the film's rip roaring first act pretty much quelled any issues (even if there's then 15 minutes of dead air exposition that follows before picking right back up). Repetition of jokes—the soliloquy, "So they call me...," "SCHULTZ!"—only get funnier with each variation. But Lubistch also manages the most clever moment of pathos with the speech from Merchant of Venice, which fits in that strange moment of being delightfully funny while also a note of resistance. Perhaps more than a work against the Nazis—it's as anti-Germany as…

Recent reviews

Review by Liz Bright ★★★★½

There will never be a more accurate depiction of theatre people on screen than this one
Review by Katie Bruner ★★★★½

oh, man.
This is big league political satire; sharp and funny, likeable characters, but with genuine stakes. The shylock motif works perfectly.
Review by Lance

lubitsch did not say what he really wanted to here--he couldn't
Review by Evan ★★★★½

Boldly subversive and irreverent in a lot of ways that I wasn't expecting, nor did I think were even possible for the time. The entire idea that theatre can defeat literal fascism is completely masturbatory, so it's to Lubitsch's credit that everything in this lands as well as it does. A screwball comedy loaded with concentration camp jokes could've been horrifyingly tone-deaf in the hands of anyone else, but here, those gags are always at the expense of the Nazis and made in a way that never diminishes the underlying seriousness of the subject matter. The setup is maybe a little too prolonged, but once the plot really kicks into gear, this is as close to perfect as you can get.
Review by yuvalpm

A laugh is nothing to be sneezed at.

Film Knowledge Course
Review by LinktoPast ★★★★½

Wie grandios ist dieser Film bitte?
Review by RussellD ★★★★★

Brilliant and hilarious satire about a group of artists/performers fucking over Nazis. Gee, I can't imagine why that feels surprisingly relevant?!
Review by canoilas ★★★★

"They named a brandy after Napoleon, they made a herring out of Bismarck, and the Fuhrer is going to end up as a piece of cheese!"
Review by pascal ehrlich ★★★★½

Was für ein fantastischer Film! „To be or not to be“ von Ernst Lubitsch ist 1942 erschienen und spielt im Jahr 1939; das macht ihn wahrscheinlich zum ultimativen „Too-soon“ Witz. Der Film besitzt eine Dynamik, von der sich Billy Wilder eindeutig eine Scheibe abgeschnitten hat und die an „Shakespearsche“ Verwechslungskomödien erinnert. Dabei wird der Regisseur jedoch nie vulgär und tritt immer mit dem angemessenen Respekt an die Sache heran. Die Dialoge sind scharfsinnig und clever und die Schauspieler besitzen ein perfektes Timing. Der Einfluss Ernst Lubitsch auf Wes Anderson ist unverkennbar: In Wes Andersons Filmen erkennt man die Komik in der Trauer, in Lubitsch „To be or not to be“ schimmert die Trauer in der Komik durch.