Luminous Lombard and a Never-Better Benny Light Up Lubitsch's Classic Nazi Satire

Rating: 10/10 (1 August 2006)

There is a certain sense of melancholy I feel when I watch this 1942 classic Ernst Lubitsch movie, as it represents the last appearance of the luminous Carole Lombard, surely the most breathtaking and high-spirited of actresses during Hollywood's golden era. In a rush to get home to husband Clark Gable after a successful war bond tour, she died in a plane crash during the film's post-production, and as the result proves without a doubt, the world lost one of the great treasures of the silver screen. She and co-star Jack Benny play Maria and Joseph Tura, the egocentric stars of a Polish acting troupe who are caught in the 1939 Nazi invasion of Warsaw. As a world-class flirt, she is carrying on with a handsome young pilot named Stanislav Sobinski, and their trysts begin once he hears his cue to get up from his theater seat, Hamlet's famous opening line to his soliloquy as spoken by an increasingly perturbed Joseph.
The romantic triangle quickly takes a backseat to an espionage thriller involving a German spy named Professor Siletsky, who holds the names of members of the Polish underground. His intention is to kill them, but the acting troupe, now with their theater in ruins, band together to stop him. This includes the need for the extremely vainglorious Joseph to impersonate Siletsky in front of the befuddled Colonel Ehrhardt and for Maria to seduce any Nazi official who stands in their way. While it sounds like a piece of wartime propaganda, the film actually becomes more farcical even as people are getting killed.
As Joseph, Benny has never been better, conveying both self-absorption and cunning expertly, and the script by Edwin Justus Mayer and an uncredited Lubitsch gives him a number of great one-liners. With her honey-toned voice and smoky elegance, Lombard is at the top of her game as the seductive Maria, as she dexterously shows her comic and dramatic sides with precision and unparalleled style. Delivering her lines with subtle finesse, she provides a strong match for Benny. Sixty-four years later, and there is still no one who can touch her. The rest of the ensemble is memorable starting with Sig Ruman's hilarious turn as Ehrhardt. A fresh-faced Robert Stack, all of 22, plays Sobinski with a callow, zestful energy, while Felix Bressart excels as the ultimately heroic Greenberg.
The movie makes direct commentaries on the concentration camps, and the satirical aspects are blissfully unapologetic. The stylishness of the comedy in light of the virulent wartime setting is what makes the film memorable and it proves what a master Lubitsch was at this level of subtlety. The 2005 DVD comes with two extras both featuring Benny - an ancient twenty-minute comedy short from 1930 called "The Rounder" and a brief commercial for war bonds. I wish they could have included some tribute to Lombard as it would have been fitting on this disc.