To Be or Not to Be

This is one of those movies I grew up with, it having been a key cornerstone of my father's small VHS collection. This is probably the Mel Brooks movie I've seen the most, and like many films from my childhood, I haven't seen it in years. The movie was instantly recognizable and new all at once, and while it is a remake of an Ernst Lubitsch film of the same name from 1942 (a film I've seen once many moons ago and remember little of), I've always seen it as its own creation. It's also the one movie that Brooks has a role in that he didn't direct that I associate with him most fully, having handed off the directing duties to Alan Johnson, the choreographer Brooks had worked with on musical numbers all the way back to The Producers while retaining the producer credit under his Brooksfilms production company.

In Poland in the earliest days of World War II, the Bronski theatrical company tries to keep things moving along, ignoring the world-shattering events happening outside their doors in favor of simply entertaining their audience. Led by the husband and wife acting team, Frederick (Brooks) and Anna (Anne Bancroft, Brooks' wife), they can only keep the world out so long before the Polish Foreign Office sends an official to end their production of a bit called "Naughty Nazis" that pokes fun at Hitler, in order to not offend the German chancellor and give him grounds to invade Poland. Not that Hitler really needed offense because he rolls right over the border shortly thereafter, and the theatrical troupe is suddenly trying to operate under Nazi occupation.

During one of the final performances, a young Polish airman, Lieutenant Andrei Sobinski (Tim Matheson), after having sent dozens of roses to Anna, gets invited backstage and the two begin a very chaste love affair without Frederick's knowledge, brought to a sudden close when Sobinski must flee to England to join the Polish arm of the Royal Air Corps. In England, he discovers that the Voice for a Free Poland, Professor Siletski (Jose Ferrer), is actually a German spy who has collected names from the Polish underground with every intention of giving up those names to the Gestapo once he arrives in Warsaw the next evening. Airdropped into Poland, he finds shelter with Anna, and we have our mixture of dramatic and comic setups. On the one hand there's a ticking clock on finding a way to get the list of names from Siletski, and on the other hand there's Sobinski hiding away from the SS in Frederick's own bed.

The plot develops into a plan to trick Siletski into giving up the list to the actors and then giving useless names to the local SS Colonel Erhardt (Charles Durning). This involves a series of disguises for Frederick that take his acting ability to its furthest, all without an audience, providing Frederick with both opportunity for amusement and pathos as he reflects on the danger he keeps getting himself into and out of. In between all of this is Anna, catching the eye of every German officer and spy and using her appeal to help advance the overall plan. As it makes it to its finale, with the troupe of actors making their way to England using the skills of their pilot friend, there's tension and even a nice Highlight from The Merchant of Venice for Lupinsky.

The movie really is a combination of drama and comedy, but the drama is what holds most firmly. There are definitely funny bits throughout ranging from character-based humor to stuff that edges more into the outrageous, like the announcer at the beginning of the film saying that the rest of the film will be in English instead of Polish with Brooks and Bancroft reacting to the sound or Lupinsky (Lewis J. Stadlen) doing a Star of David over his chest like a Catholic doing a cross. Most of it is a smaller type of comedy, though, and I can see how that would disappoint fans of Brooks' more typical output. The one person who consistently edges into that type of comedy is Durning as Erhardt and Christopher Lloyd as Schultz, the colonel constantly on edge at being found out by higherups that he tells jokes about the Fuhrer, a role for which he was nominated for an Oscar, and Schultz always loyally following orders that Erhardt blames him for going badly.

Where I think the movie succeeds where Brooks more recent output had failed is that its actually a story. Essentially just replicating the original film by Lubitsch while finding room for Brooks and Bancroft to have some fun, it's an enjoyable film with obvious affection for its characters and the ability to find levels of pathos for major and even some minor characters while delivering laughs from time to time as well. On top of the functional story is funny stuff. Wipe away the funny stuff, and you still have something. However, the funny stuff is there and it's nice to have for sure. This may not be Brooks' finest hour on film, but it's a rather delightful take on familiar material.

This is the great Mel Brooks at his best!.

He revisits this classic film and makes it even crazier than the original, adding a lot of new stuff... (there are 3 numbers where Mel dances and sings, there are clowns, jews and a homosexual hairdresser pursued by the evil and stupid nazis.)

All the actors in this movie, and I mean ALL, are just terrific.

I´d like to state that this is not a remake of the Ernst Lubistch classic, (at least that´s my opinion), to me this is a tribute to the great director and his masterpiece.

I´ve watched the Lubistch "To be or not to be" a lot of times for it´s one of my favorite films, and the Mel Brooks version is completely different from the original. It was made the Brooks way, which I really adore.

So watch this film, you´ll have a lot of fun and won´t stop laughing.

Oh, just one more thing...

This is an asking to 20th Century Fox: When you decide to release this movie in DVD, include the absolutely amazing video-clip: "To be or not to be - Hitler Rap" performed by Mel Brooks please!!. I can assure you that a lot of people will buy it just for that.

(9 out of 10)

I loved the Benny/Lombard version but Brookes and Bancroft are so personable you cannot help but love this. Durning was so funny and Christopher Lloyd was great....

I liked it.

Rather than a satire of a film classic like Frankenstein or a genre of films like the western was done in Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks chose for the one and only time to do a remake of an already very funny film with the classic To Be Or Not To Be. 40 years later the Brooks remake has lost none of the laughs from the original, in fact Brooks could now talk about things unmentionable when Hollywood was under the Code.

The 1942 original film that starred Jack Benny, Carole Lombard, and Robert Stack in the roles that Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, and Tim Matheson play here, was a sophisticated comedy that was not well received when first out, many thought the Nazis were no subject to joke about during wartime. Over time it gained acceptance as yet another of the masterpieces that Ernest Lubitsch did over his career. It may have been Jack Benny's best big screen performance. It was also Carole Lombard's farewell performance.

Benny's comedy was droll, Brooks's humor hits you with a sledgehammer. Still the different approach works out in this remake. Anne Bancroft is more than a good substitute for Carole Lombard, in fact she's as funny in this as Lombard ever was on the screen.

Many years ago one of my supervisors knew Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft and he told us at work that her image as a great dramatic actress, whose two career roles are in The Graduate and The Miracle Worker was a total fabrication. Mel Brooks he said was as zany a man in private as he was in film. But he also said that Bancroft was even zanier than he was and had few times to display that in public. In that sense the two were a perfectly matched couple. My supervisor said he lived in the same building as they did in Greenwich Village and got to know both of them.

Mel Brooks got to show the effect of the Holocaust to come on gays in one of the first films to acknowledge that publicly. One of the touching performances in the supporting cast is by James Haake as Sascha the dresser for Bancroft who gets a one way ticket to a concentration camp, but the trip gets put on hold permanently by his friends in the theater. Charles Durning also does well as Gestapo head in Warsaw who gets constantly bamboozled almost like World War II era film Nazis by Brooks's ingenuity and his theater troupe who give the best performances of their lives. And we can't forget Jose Ferrer adding yet another ethnic group to his repertoire as the Polish traitor Siletsky.

If you're not a fan of Mel Brooks you will become one after you see any of his films. And this review is dedicated to the late Robert Peregoff, one of my supervisors at work who provided me the insights I got into the Brooks-Bancroft screen and life partnership.

If I heard about a remake of To Be or Not to Be and didn't know the cast, I'd probably shrug it off and stick with the original. One of the reasons I loved the 1942 version is because it was made during wartime and had an extra sense of fear in every scene, since no one knew how the war would turn out. A remake in the 1980s wouldn't have that same effect, no matter how good it was. But, since I knew the cast, I decided to rent it. Who doesn't want to see Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft together?

The remake is extremely similar to the original, so if you did love the 1942 film, you'll still love this one. Just in case you don't know the plot, I won't spoil it for you here. It follows a theater troupe in Poland during WWII, and how they get involved in the fight "backstage". Just as in the original, the comic timing in the remake is impeccable, and you'll see some familiar faces joining the cast. Charles Durning plays Erhardt, Christopher Lloyd plays Schultz, and José Ferrer plays Siletski. If you don't know who those characters are, then you obviously haven't seen either version of this story. It's time you started! Pick whichever cast appeals to you and get ready to split your sides laughing.