Benny good, man!

Rating: 8/10 (29 December 2018)

This is a quite brilliant Ernst Lubitsch film which manages to skilfully combine wartime dramatic pathos with wonderfully barbed humour, without doing so in an overtly propaganda-laden way. Set in Warsaw, just before and then during the initial German occupation which itself triggered World War 2, it starts in a relatively light-hearted manner as we're introduced to an acting troupe headed by husband and wife team Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, he the hammish, self-confident leading man, she the toy-boy-chasing leading lady. When the group's latest production, topically called "Gestapo" is closed down for fear of reprisals by the fearful authorities, they and their company join the local resistance. Amongst the rest of the cast are two spear-carrying extras who each dream of bigger parts, one who recites Shylock's "If you prick me do I not bleed" speech any chance he can, the other convinced he could pass for Hitler to the general public. When these foibles are adroitly woven into the plot at a climactic stage later in the film you appreciate how well written and crafted the movie is.
I've never seen Jack Benny in any other feature and only know him for his deadpan humour on American TV much later than this but he's great here as the cuckolded husband pressed into action by the Polish resistance, struggling to balance his personal life with the National Good. His timing is spot-on and really you have to wonder why movies didn't also become his medium the way they did for say Bob Hope, but if this is his one major film role, then it's certainly a memorable one. Lombard I've sometimes not appreciated in some of her other roles but she's delightful here, coquettish, but clever with it.
The film shows the Polish resistance running rings round their German occupiers and also lampoons Hitler in bold fashion which surely wouldn't have been lost on wartime viewers. I loved the interwoven plotting as well as the frequent laugh-out-loud gags - right from the first humorous "Heil Myself" to the last "To Be Or Not To Be" running gag. There are only a couple of misfiring jokes like when Lombard complicity moans "Heil Hitler" when receiving a kiss from the Polish traitor or the too obvious "Friends, Romans and countrymen" line from Benny but there are far more hits than misses for sure.
For me this film could have worked as a drama without the comedy and as a comedy without the drama. That's how strong both elements are here and yet put them together as well as Lubitsch does here and you have something special.
About that there is no question.