A Fellow Of Infinite Jest ...

Rating: 8/10 (18 April 2007)

... as Shakespeare didn't say of Ernst Lubitsch but may very well have had he lived in the 20th century. This was one of his last films and one of an unbroken string of 'classics' including Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, Ninotchka and Heaven Can Wait. At least one person writing about To Be Or Not To Be here wondered in print if Billy Wilder had a hand in the screenplay; whilst it's easy to see why someone might think that the answer is no - Wilder, of course, co-wrote the screenplays for both Bluebeard's Eighth Wife and Nonotchka - though the whole premise of the movie is very Wilderian, a Black Comedy about the rape of Poland by the Nazis actually shot whilst the violation was taking place, as good a definition of inflagrante delicto as any I know of, this is compounded by the rape of Shakespeare by a ham actor, Jozef Tura a dream part for Jack Benny who was a better actor than he was given credit for having for years played on radio (and later television) a character light years away from his real persona. Just as Wilder would do in his own films - The Apartment, for example - Lubitsch switches effortlessly between laugh-out-loud comedy and the real drama of a nation under siege and having selected a consummate group of actors from top-billed Carole Lombard to the cream of supporting players such as Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart, Stanley Ridges he got the very best out of them and even Robert Stack in a thankless under-developed role wasn't a total loss. A brilliant comedy that still stands up today.