Sunday, June 22, 2014

June 22: To Be or Not to Be (1942 -- Ernst Lubitsch)

★★★★★

Controversial at the time, Ernst Lubitsch’s strategy of fighting fascism with wit and finesse led to one of his most effective works in To Be or Not to Be.  Lubitsch’s cinematic strength isn't drama, adventure or broad comedy, so when wanted to take aim at what was happening in Europe, he applied his Lubitsch Touch to deflate National Socialism rather than confront it.

The witty layers that are so important to the film are apparent from the opening, which is as bravura an opening as any Indiana Jones faced.  The film starts with Hitler window shopping on a street in Warsaw and then cuts to a scene in a Gestapo office.  Aside from the Nazi connection, little binds these two shots, but the Gestapo scene is interrupted by yet a third narrative line that tells us the Gestapo office interaction isn't real but is part of a play.  With this new layer of information, the audience reinterprets the office scene as a piece of performance rather than the story of the film.  Meanwhile, the director of the play becomes involved in a discussion of the scene, which reveals that the Hitler we originally saw on the Warsaw street was actually one of these actors dressed as Hitler.  So we add a new layer of meaning to that first scene, and To Be or Not to Be then returns to it as the actor tries to prove he’s a convincing Hitler.  This four-part opening is a skilled, zippy run through several frames of reference that reinterpret and add layers of meaning to what we have in front of us onscreen.

And this opening is a microcosm of how Lubitsch uses complex, multiple layers of reinterpretation and meaning throughout the movie, usually to humorous effect and often at the expense of the Nazis.  When Joseph is impersonating Col. Ehrhardt with Siletsky, for example, the Professor jokes that Maria Tura’s husband was being fooled, and “Col. Ehrhardt” immediately moves to correct the situation because he is, in fact, Joseph.  It’s the reaction of a husband in the role of a Gestapo official, and we follow the scene on two levels.  This same scene sets up another example of layering.  During their conversation, Siletsky tells “Ehrhart” that he’s known as Concentration Camp Erhart, and Joseph/Ehrhart, unsure how to respond, replies “Ah, is that so”?  Later, when Joseph is playing Siletsky with the real Ehrhardt and tells the Colonel about the nickname, Ehrhart replies exactly as Joseph had previously. This response is an obvious ironic nod to the previous encounter, but Joseph’s multi-layered follow-up is that he’d thought Ehrhart would react that way, an appropriate comment in the immediate situation but also one that harkens back to the previous scene.  And even in small gestures, Lubitsch provides multiple layers of meaning.  As Joseph walks sadly into Maria’s dressing room after the announcement of the invasion of Poland, we assume he is sad over the news; in fact, he’s sad because someone has walked out of his performance.  Added to the irony of the two interpretations of Joseph’s sadness is that Maria had set up the walk-out for her own purposes.  To Be or Not to Be spends much of its run time building multiple layers of meaning for scenes.

And if the opening of the film is a preview of Lubitsch’s use of multi-layered significance, it also points to how tightly To Be or Not to Be is constructed.  Detail after detail in the opening is picked up later in the film.  Joseph’s jealousy of Maria becomes clear in some of the dialog of the opening, and it is very important later when the jealous husband accidentally reveals his identity to Siletsky.  And Bronsky’s portrayal of Hitler, which we see in the opening, becomes important in the escape scene later; there is also humorous reference several times to the scene stealing of Rawich, starting in the opening.  It is also in the opening that we first hear Greenberg refer to Shylock’s if-you-prick-us monologue, a monologue that takes on great, multi-layered pathos when the Jewish Greenberg delivers it to Hitler’s guard at the theater.  Even the joke in the opening about Hitler being remembered as a type of cheese resurfaces several times in the rest of the film.

The tightness of the introduction is only a foretaste of a script that wastes no detail.  For example, a reference to Joseph’s losing his fake beard and having a spare one becomes important when the actor has to shave the dead Siletsky’s face and use the spare on it.  And in fact, as the group is making its escape, Joseph again loses his beard.  Likewise, Hamlet’s to-be-or-not-to-be soliloquy has multiple uses throughout the film.  Originally a signal for Stanislav to come to Maria’s dressing room, it becomes a code that Stanislav uses to send a message to Maria.  And there’s the unexpected humor at the end of film when Joseph begins his soliloquy with Stanislav in the audience and, instead of Stanislav using it as cue to leave the audience, yet another soldier stands and makes his way out, surprising both of the men.  Details have functions in this tight script.

To Be or Not to Be sparkles with wit and economy.  A basic decision like casting Jack Benny as a Shakespearean actor carries no small amount of ironic wit, and when Benny walks on the stage as an old, tights-wearing Hamlet, the image is comic in itself.  There’s wit everywhere in the dialog, too.  “Does the fact that I can drop two tons of dynamite in three minutes interest you?” asks the young, sincere, smitten Stanslav.  “It CERTAINLY DOES!” leers Maria, playing with a double entendre.  There’s hardly a moment of the film that isn’t showing its wit or setting up a clever moment for later in the film.

But To Be or Not to Be isn’t all frothy comedy; Lubitsch lets the brutality of National Socialism show through clearly at points.  The film opens by showing the store signs of businesses in Warsaw, but after the Nazi conquest, we see the same signs fallen, broken and burned.  There’s no clever wit in these images.  Nor is the delivery by Greenberg of Shylock’s if-you-prick-us monologue a witty joke.  As the Jew stands in front of Hitler’s guard, the camera zooms in on his face, and the movie pauses to hear the Shakespearean anti-racist plea.  In context, it’s a plea for Poles, but the actor’s Jewish identity makes it also a plea for that persecuted minority.  We also see the reality of death in the macabre scene when Joseph finds himself, impersonating Siletsky, in the same room with the real Siletsky’s body.  Although the film is justly praised for its light Lubitsch Touch, there’s more than a little of the reality of the horrors of Nazism in the film.

It’s not hard to see the influence of To Be or Not to Be on Wes Anderson’s recent Grand Budapest Hotel.  Both films are articulate and witty, and both use this elegance in a critique of Nazism.  Gustave H. with his elaborate schemes and witty repartee would not be out of place in the world of To Be or Not to Be.  And in both films, there is also a brutality that occasionally jags through the comic artifice to remind us we’re not watching a film that is simply an ornate confection.  The brutal murder of  Vilmos Kovacs in Grand Budapest keeps the real subject of the film before us.  Overall, the common inspiration of the two films is striking.


To Be or Not to Be is an elegant, clever set of parallels, wit and layered meanings, but all this is in service of a deep critique of the horror that was already gripping Europe.  It’s no small task to pull such disparate elements together; it takes comprehensive vision and the touch of a director like Ernst Lubitsch.

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