To Be or Not to Be (1942)

Rating: 8/10 (18 March 2020)

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Starring Jack Benny, Carole Lombard, Robert Stack, Stanley Ridges, Sig Ruman, Lionel Atwill, Felix Bressart, Tom Dugan, Henry Victor, Charles Halton, Maude Eburne.
First-rate farce, augmented by astute satirical and black comedy elements, was a dangerous proposition at the time of its release when the world was at war, tensions were high, and funny bones were invulnerable to elbow nudges. "Great, great Polish actor" Benny, his even more famous actress wife Lombard, and the rest of their theatre troupe get involved in a spy masquerade in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Stack is the Polish aviator sweet on Lombard, Ruman the bumbling colonel, Dugan as the führer (but not really) in one of the movie's better gags. Has hardly aged a day, and even though some of the set-ups are overextended, there are no shortage of laughs. Mockery of ideology is a potent weapon, indeed. Final film for Lombard, who died in a plane crash shortly before the film was released.
82/100