"What he did to Shakespeare, we are doing now to Poland"

Rating: 8/10 (5 July 2008)

With my supply of Billy Wilder pictures rapidly dwindling, I decided to turn my attention to the filmmaker who is generally agreed to have been the writer/director's foremost inspiration. Born in Berlin in 1892, Ernst Lubitsch began his film career as an actor in 1912, and writing and directing duties followed just two years later. He swiftly made a name for himself in German cinema, and, recognising the greater resources to be found in Hollywood, relocated to the United States in 1922, under contract with Mary Pickford. Talented writer Billy Wilder  also born in Germany  worked with Lubitsch on two pictures, 'Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)' and 'Ninotchka (1939),' and the influence to be found in Wilder's later work is unmistakable. 'Stalag 17 (1953)' was a courageous comedy picture in its own right, approaching Nazicism and prisoners-of-war in a lighthearted fashion, but Lubitsch's 'To Have and Have Not (1942),' released at the height of World War Two, is in a completely different league of audaciousness. War-time propaganda has never been so much fun!
The picture opens with a peaceful street in Warsaw, where citizens are leisurely going about their business. Suddenly, everybody turns in shock, staring in disbelief at the person who has just sidled up to Mr. Maslowski's delicatessen  could that possibly be Adolf Hitler? It turns out that he is merely an actor engaged in a local theatre production, where famous performers Joseph and Maria Tura (Jack Benny and Carole Lombard) are staging a Nazi satire. On the eve of opening night, political forces prevent the play from being performed, but those sets and costumes certainly aren't going to go to waste. After Hitler's army marches into Poland without warning, throwing Warsaw into disarray, it falls to these actors to prevent the leakage of top-secret Allied documents to the Gestapo. To avoid execution, Joseph Tura must deliver the acting performance of his career, all the while keeping an eye on his wife, whom he suspects of being unfaithful with a handsome Polish pilot (Robert Stack).
The early years of the 1940s provided a unique assortment of Hollywood pictures, with war-time propaganda reaching its manipulative, patriotic climax. Most filmmakers responded to the current political climate with super-serious and often unconvincing drama, but a select few  including Charles Chaplin with 'The Great Dictator (1940)'  decided to unveil the comedic side of war, often layered beneath the tragedy of conflict and persecution. 'To Be or Not to Be' spends a few too many minutes on Robert Stack's comparatively uninteresting Allied spy, but, as soon as Jack Benny re-enters the equation, the farce kicks into full-gear. German-born Sig Ruman is hilarious as the bumbling Col. "Concentration Camp" Ehrhardt, and Billy Wilder obviously thought so highly of the performance that he cast the actor as the very-similar Sgt. Johann Schulz in 'Stalag 17.' We always enjoy seeing our film heroes cleverly out-wit the foolish bad-guys, and when the bad-guys are none other than Adolf Hitler and his band of Nazis, victory is very sweet, indeed.