To Be Or Not To Be

I saw To Be Or Not To Be over the weekend, the 1942 Lubitsch version. (I don't think there's a single director Mel Brooks is less temperamentally suited to remake than Lubitsch.) It's a classic I've seen many times, but if you, dear reader, haven't yet, I suggest you skip this post and go rent it.

The film stars Carole Lombard and Jack Benny, but it's really Benny's film. Lombard is funny and glamorous, but Lubitsch had the movie written for Benny. Lombard knew she was second banana but didn't care--she loved the script and loved Lubitsch. Alas, it was her last film, as she died in a plane crash before it was released.

The theme of the film is acting. It's set in the world of acting--theatre--but it's also about how we act in everyday life. The two leads are Joseph and Maria Tura, the Lunts of Poland. Even when offstage, they put on the vain, self-absorbed character that stars are supposed to have. They see their lives as a show and they are the leads. Maria even plays the part in magazine spreads where she pretends to long for the simple life.

But their commitment to acting will soon be tested. The film starts out, in part, as just another Lubitsch sex comedy, but just as Germany invades Poland, so does a serious war movie invade the Lubitsch film. After a funny opening, the film is suddenly a spy thriller with no laughs for about 20 minutes. It takes a while for the film to absorb this new seriousness--where death, and not adultery, is the threat--and return to humor. Ironically, it's the seriousness of the theme that makes the comedy cut even sharper. Only in the last few minutes of the film are we returned to the harmless sex comedy.

The Tura's may not be as good at acting as they think they are--no one can be--but they're not bad actors, and when their lives are on the line, they give the performances of their lives. They know not to overplay. (Their troupe does have a ham--Lionel Atwill--who twice overplays his part and has to be restrained by the others before he blows it.) Benny in particular gets better and better at his part--early on, he loses his character for an instant and it almost costs him his life, so he has to learn quickly.

But everyone acts in this film, the Nazis too. All the way up to the top. When the director says the troupe's bit actor (Tom Dugan) dressed as Hitler merely looks like a man with a little mustache, the obvious reply is so does Hitler. Lubitsch knew the Nazis were no joke, but all the fancy costumes, the big speeches, the goose stepping, the bowing and scraping--it was as if the Nazis were trying to pull off a role that even they couldn't convince themselves was true. To borrow another line from Shakespeare, All The World's A Stage. That's part of the point when the "stagiest" moment is a real murder--a shot rings out, someone shouts, the curtain rises, and there stands Siletsky, downstage left, slowly crumpling in the spotlight.

The best, most subtle actor the Nazis have in this film is Siletsky (Stanley Ridges). He's a Nazi spy who pretends he supports the Polish underground. But he makes the slightest mistake--doesn't recognize the name of Maria Tura (this actor didn't prepare enough) and ends up signing his death warrant. Even a significantly worse actor, Colonel Ehrhardt (Sig Ruman), has a little playacting lesson when he invites Benny--whom he knows is an impostor--to his office; Benny, the better actor, is able to turn the tables on Ehrhardt. (Ehrhardt appears to be the only person who's ever paid to see Tura act, and he's not impressed--he makes a funny, tasteless crack ("what he did to Shakespeare we are doing now to Poland")--but the joke is on him again, since he's telling it to Tura, who has once again fooled him.)

Though everyone is acting, it's all dead serious, since, as noted above, failure doesn't mean a bad review, but a bullet. That's the real meaning of the title. When Benny as Tura plays Hamlet (a ridiculous and funny idea), it's hard to believe Tura really feels the meaning of the words. He'll learn. Ultimately, that's how the story works. Usually, Lubitsch has you worrying about a romance, but here, as much as he mocks the Nazis, we know they are ruthless murderers--this is why the story works and still, to this day, has power. It's Lubitsch's darkest comedy by far, and yet, fitting the subject in another way, his crudest and most farcical.

Watching the film again, I was able to note the structure. The script is built around five big block sequences, mostly comic, and all starring Jack Benny. There are other big moments, of course, but these keep the story going and build upon one another, as the stakes keep getting higher.

1) Jack Benny is the head of the Gestapo, interrogating a boy about his father. This is the opening and seems to be real. (So real that Benny's father stormed out of the movie theatre.) It's played for comedy and there's nothing at stake here. Benny's not in trouble and it turns out to be a play anyway.

2) Benny once again plays a Gestapo head (the early scene, as silly as it was, sets up all the action as the plot unfolds). But this time it's for real. He's mostly in charge, and it's on his turf (the theatre) with his men outside the door. However, he slips for a second and almost gets killed.

3) Benny, as Siletsky, goes to see the real Gestapo head, Ehrhardt. (In the wittiest exchange, which gets two of the biggest laughs, Ehrhardt acts and speaks exactly as Benny did earlier--if anything, Benny underplayed--and Benny replies "I thought you'd react just that way.") This scene is more dangerous, since Benny is here against his will and has no allies nearby--he has to carefully improvise and pulls it off brilliantly, gaining the confidence of Ehrhardt and taking the heat off himself.

4) The most dangerous moment yet, by far. Benny has to return to the Gestapo HQ, and he doesn't know the Nazis have found him out. This time he thinks faster than ever and by the time his act is over, he's fooled and humiliated Ehrhardt and has figured out an escape plan (soon ruined by his troupe coming to rescue him). The escalation of intensity adds tremendously to the comedy.

5) The most dangerous scene of all, this requires to whole troupe (minus Lombard, who still has another boudoir scene to play) to pull off. Under the nose of Hitler himself, they must make their escape. They even pull in Greenberg (Felix Bressart) to do Shylock.

They all escape to England, having saved the Polish underground, and Lubitsch finally returns to his sex comedy, with a topper gag. Lubitsch has been wittier (Trouble In Paradise) and even deeper (The Shop Around The Corner), but he's never been so ferociously funny.