MovieChat Forums > To Be or Not to Be (1942) Discussion > One of the best political satires ever m...

One of the best political satires ever made....and yet ppl call it 'bad'

posted 19 years ago by classicfilmbuff
23 replies | jump to latest

Ok so by now you all should get my position when ppl make outrageous remarks about good movies, i tend to get skeptical becuz either there are no strong points about their argument or just becuz they want to be different. But when it comes to the classic movies, obviously the movies I thrive upon, it just gets me mad. To Be or not to be in my opinion is BY FAR top five of the best political satires ever made...Dr. Strngelove, MASH, Duck Soup, The Great Dictator included. And it the BEST film of that year because of its brilliant script and all around performances...obviously I shall exclude Casablanca for objectivity if one has to argue my statement.

TBONTB features a hilarious performance by great Jack Benny, playing egocentric "ham" actor Joseph Tura whose self-confidence excels a little bit further than his skills at Shakespeare. At one point Joseph asks a Nazi officer what he thought about his acting and the officers immediately replies: "What he did to Shakespeare we are doing now to Poland." Jack Benny, known for his long pauses, dsiplays his genius in this movie as he stutters and gasps himself throughout several situation. Check out the scenes in which he says "To Be or not to be", he almost never continues with his monologue after those words which adds to the moment in itself.

Carole Lomabard in her first comedy in five years makes a rather grand return as she walks into a Nazi Concentration camp in a gold dress. Obviously she is an actress and wife of Joseph Tura, Maria. Although more reserved in the roles she was kwown prior...she nevertheless added a sense of wit and charm to a rather flirtatious character. This film is mostly noted as her final film and showed how patriotic she really was.

Well there are more reasons why I feel why this film deserves more recognition as one of the better comedies...and yet there are still ppl who oppose by saying these bs remarks. WHY??? Can anyone give any good reasons why they think film is not funny?

"Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did."

[–] TheLamplightersSerenade 13 years ago

I realize this is quite a few years old, but maybe I should throw my two cents in there anyway.

I felt the movie couldn't keep a consistent tone, which ruined it for me at least. It went too far into thriller and then by the next scene too far into screwball comedy and buffoonery that it bothered me. It had a hard time mixing genres, which is why I wasn't crazy about it.

I also wasn't crazy about the characters. Sobinski was a dumb and annoying shoe in my opinion and Josef was just, as the other characters say, a ham. Maria's affair kind of bothered me but she was all right.

Don't get me wrong, it was incredibly funny, especially the ending when Maria "dates" Hitler.

But take a look at something like the Apartment. Billy Wilder had laughs and witty one liners in every depressing scene and in every dramatic scene there was wit and humor. He didn't tread too far into drama without throwing in a few laughs and didn't go too far into humor without throwing in a suicide to darken things a bit. That was how a comedy with drama should be handled, imo.

[–] caribeno 12 years ago

Lamplighters:

I respect your opinion. I can understand how the drastic change in tone from wartime thriller to screwball comedy could leave someone going "Huhhh?"

I liked that about "To Be or Not To Be". Lubitsch was quoted as saying he wanted to BOTH portray Nazis for the vicious psychos they were and to puncture their racist ideology that, we must not forget, many people sympathized with in this and other countries just before America entered World War II. By mixing gritting reality with his customary wit and showing off Nazis in their buffoonish loyalty to such a defaming, destructive ideology, he hoped to shake Nazi sympathizers out of their thinking. I find his juxtapositions of tone daring and remarkable, making "To Be or Not To Be" fascinating for that type of tone change as well as for it's direction, acting, script, and photography.

[–] DoobakusBoy 11 years ago

I just finished watching this movie off my DVR. I had never heard of it before I recorded it, but I often browse the TCM schedule for movies that sound interesting, and this one piqued my interest.

I can't believe I had never heard of this before, and that it's not better known in general. This is definitely one of the 5 to 10 best comedies I've ever seen. I find it stunning that this was released in 1942 because a lot of the humor seems very modern, and it stands up very well even 70+ years later. I laughed out loud several times, and found the plotting to be very clever as well.

I guess the only negative I have to offer is that I found the use of English throughout the movie just a little distracting. I know...suspension of disbelief and all that. It's hardly the first movie to have foreigners speak in English, but in this movie, the main characters spoke the same lightly accented English whether they were being themselves or pretending to be German, and in a movie that is built around a series of deceptions, it was just a little distracting. Compare to Inglorious Basterds, which mined a lot of humor out of English speaking characters attempting to pass themselves off as Italian. I'm guessing my complaint is more of a function of the era I live in, and the movies I'm used to seeing today...I wonder if audiences 70 years ago would have had the same reaction.

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] classicfilmbuff 9 years ago

I honestly don't remember what my problem was since it was done in 2007. But I am less of a snob and still love the film.

"Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did."