★★★★★
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.
