To Be or Not to Be

A great war comedy with moments so incredible that they take your breath away to the point where you might not even laugh. Yet, they are funny moments, but it's really nice to see how far the creators dared to go. This couldn't be a film that Hitler would have liked, and that's just as well. Similar comedies unfortunately aren't made today because creators don't know where the line is and how to jab in a way that stings. (09/11/2014)

This is a brilliant war-time comedy by Ernst Lubitsch. It is full of lightning-fast dialogues, bristling with sharp wit, which to fully grasp requires more than one viewing (and for Czech audiences well-translated subtitles). For 1942, being unconventionally topical, and containing very black humor must have caught the audience off guard, with jokes about Gestapo practices, executions, and concentration camps. Today, we can only appreciate the bold humor and call To Be or Not To Be one of the best comedies of the 1940s. The well-put-together cast, featuring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, is very entertaining, and when the theater company’s whole adventure is at an end, you feel like watching their hardships for another hours more. (05/08/2019)