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List Price: $19.98Amazon.com's Price: $17.99 You Save: $1.99 (10%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780790790039
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 0790790033
Label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: March 01, 2005
Running Time: 99 minutes
Sales Rank: 9500
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: March 06, 1942
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video:
Just as Roberto Benigni found himself on the receiving end of some finger-wagging for making a comedy set during the Holocaust, so the great Ernst Lubitsch caught some heat for this extraordinary 1942 satire set behind enemy lines during World War II. In his best performance on film, Jack Benny stars as Joseph Tura, the lead actor and head of a Polish theater troupe that is suddenly enlisted as a Resistance organization when an American pilot (Robert Stack) requires protection. The twist is that the pilot has been having a series of trysts with Tura's wife (Carole Lombard), the hilarious evidence being the disruptive departure of Stack's character from a theater audience each night as the hammy Tura unknowingly cues the lovers by launching into Hamlet's famous soliloquy. The remarkable script by Edwin Justus Mayer ingeniously folds the tensions of a betrayed marriage into the comic suspense surrounding Tura and company's efforts to pull off a Mission: Impossible-like sting on the local Nazi command. Many unforgettable moments and lines of dialogue adorn this black comedy, and the performances--most memorably Sig Ruman's crisp volleys with Benny--are a dream. Above it all, however, is Lubitsch's unmistakable Continentalism, his accent on Old World manners especially in a dangerous situation, suggesting the Nazis' very vulgarity was a reflection of their profound evil. --Tom Keogh
Average Rating: 
Rating: -
This brilliant farce, completed just as America entered the war due to Pearl Harbour, was as controversial as it was clever. Ernst Lubitsch, like Charlie Chaplin a few years earlier with "The Great Dictator", dared to set a comedy around the Nazis. Like Chaplin's film, it opened to mix reviews, offending both critics and the public and was not a great success.
Given that premise, this is a brilliantly scripted and directed comedy set in Warsaw at the outbreak of the war. An acting troupe ... Read More
Rating: -
In the midst of World War II, before the Americans had entered into the fray, Ernst Lubitsch made what appears on the face of it an oxymoron: a light-hearted comedy about the Polish Resistance to the Nazis. (The film was released just after Pearl Harbor, but had been in the works while the United States continued to stand on the sidelines.) Of course, while it does end up being quite funny, the film has a much more serious subtext -- about the responsibilities of Hollywood (and of the United States) ... Read More
Rating: -
I am a great fan of one of the rightful kings of comedy, the late, great Jack Benny. He is featured at his wry best, here, along with the stunningly beautiful Carole Lombard--the last film she made before she tragically died in a plane crash. The title is based on the famous "To Be, Or Not To Be" soliloquy in William Shakespeare's HAMLET. A troupe of actors in Nazi-occupied Warsaw must get by on their ability as thespians to elaborately (and effectively) disguise themselves, as well as adapt new identities, ... Read More
Rating: -
TO BE OR NOT TO BE paired legendary director Ernst Lubitsch with the insanely-talented comedienne Carole Lombard (in what turned out to be her final film). Written and released during the height of WW2, the film provided a much-needed breath of fresh air for wartime audiences whilst mercilessly skewering the Nazi regime.
In Nazi-occupied Poland, theatre supercouple Joseph and Maria Tura (Jack Benny and Carole Lombard) wow the crowds with their repertory production of "Hamlet"--and moonlight as members ... Read More
Rating: -
Criticized for satirizing the raging war in Europe on its release in 1942, Lubitsch's clever, spirited, often side-splitting farce doubled as a tribute both to the Polish resistance and, quite ingeniously, to the mighty art of play-acting. Benny is terrifically funny as "that great, great actor" Joseph Tura, especially playing opposite Sig Rumann (as a Nazi colonel), and a young Robert Stack, the lovestruck lieutenant whose cue to tryst with Maria is the first line of Hamlet's soliloquy. Tragically, this was the feisty ... Read More
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