|
By
NICK ZEGARAC
Ernst Lubitch's "To Be Or
Not To Be"(1943) has to be the most genuinely
bizarre political satire to emerge from
Hollywood's golden age. It stars Jack Benny and
Carol Lombard as Joseph and Maria Tura -- a
married couple and stage performers living in
occupied Poland during WWII. Determined to alter
the course of the war, the two helm a troupe of
ham actors in a deadpan comic assault on the
Nazis. When a spy emerges with damaging
information on the Polish resistance, Joseph and
Maria decide to prevent the information from being
delivered to the Nazis.
Benny's brilliant lampoon of Hamlet's soliloquy
"To be or not to be" is at the crux of a
disastrous rendezvous between Maria and Lt.
Stanislav Sobinski (Robert Stack). Stan gets the
hots for Maria -- a passion not reciprocated.
Hence, when Stan is dispatched to war, he cruelly
implicates Maria with Professor Siletsky (Stanley
Ridges), the real spy who has a secret plan to
destroy the Warsaw resistance. The theater troupe
is then forced to use their thespian skills to
ensure their own survival, impersonating Nazi
officers and even Hitler in order to outwit the
enemy.
Controversial to say the very least, "To Be Or Not
to Be" opened to modest acclaim and was later
remade, to limited effect, as a 1983 farce
starring Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft.
Warner's DVD treatment is middle of the road. The
black and white image has been mastered from
reasonably clean film elements, contrast levels
are adequate, though at times weak, and there's
only a hint of edge enhancement and fine detail
shimmering. But darker scenes suffer from
inconsistent quality, film grain is moderate, and
age-related artifacts are present throughout. An
archival newsreel and short subject are the only
extras included. |
