To Be or Not to Be. DIrected by Ernst Lubitsch - Starring Carole Bard and Jack Benny - 1942

 To Be or Not to Be. DIrected by Ernst Lubitsch - Starring Carole Bard and Jack Benny - 1942 - set in Warsaw in 1939 with German invasion imminent has strong comedic elements, great lines but it is not the laugh a minute film that To Be or Not to Be, directed by Mel Brooks and following the plot of Lubitsch's earlier version is.

2002, the American Film Institute selected To Be or Not to Be as one of the 50 funniest American movies of all time. In March of 1942, when the film was initially released, most critics weren't laughing. A movie lampooning Adolf Hitler may have been acceptable a few years prior (see, for example, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator [1940], though even then Chaplin began to regret his decision after learning more of the Nazis' "homicidal insanity"). But by 1942, Pearl Harbor had been attacked, America had entered World War II, and, to make matters even more dour, the star of To Be or Not to Be, the radiant Carole Lombard, had died in a plane crash less than two months before the premiere.

All told, those who saw To Be or Not to Be had their reasons not to be amused.

Now, however, with the benefit of time's remedial passing and decades worth of hindsight, Ernst Lubitsch's classic stands as an entertaining, surprisingly audacious, and powerfully poignant comic gem. One of the great filmmaker's final features (he would pass away just five years later), it is today most shocking not so much for the comedy itself, but rather the abrupt yet effortless shifts in tone, from screwball hysterics to genuinely austere observations.