Lecture by Marilyn Fabe

A delightfully satirical comedy set in Nazi-occupied Warsaw-an obvious contradiction in terms, in the hands of anyone but Lubitsch. Jack Benny, leading a troupe of ham actors in outsmarting the Gestapo by reducing them to ridicule, gives a beautifully paced, more than typically animated performance, disguised along the way as a Gestapo agent and Hamlet himself. Carole Lombard as his footsie-playing wife and fellow trouper is ingenious in what was to be her last film role. The film is a stage for an essay on Hamlet's own dilemma: to act or not to act. “What I have satirized in this picture,” Lubitsch wrote in 1943, “are the Nazis and their ridiculous ideology. I have also satirized the attitude of actors who always remain actors regardless of how dangerous the situation might be, which I believe is a true observation.” To Be or Not to Be was castigated as the essence of bad taste, but lines like “What you do to Shakespeare, we (the Germans) are doing to Poland” resonate still, in what was in fact one of the most outspoken anti-Nazi films.