To Be or Not to Be (1942) on Netflix
In occupied Warsaw, a theater troupe rehearses a satire of the Nazi regime. Its star Joseph Tura and his wife Maria are drawn into airman Stanislav Sobinski's hunt for a German spy.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb8.1/1050,363 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Warsaw actors Joseph and Maria Tura are rehearsing a play that mocks the Nazi regime when the government cancels it to avoid provoking Germany. Joseph takes the title role in Hamlet, and Maria receives flowers from Lieutenant Stanislav Sobinski, a young airman who walks out on Joseph's soliloquy to meet her. Germany invades Poland, and Sobinski joins a Polish squadron of the Royal Air Force in England, where the airmen meet Professor Alexander Siletsky before his return to Warsaw. Sobinski asks him to carry a message to Maria, and is later sent to Warsaw to warn the resistance about a German spy.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Jack Benny's father walked out of a screening in disgust at seeing his son in a Nazi uniform, but Benny persuaded him to return; his father then embraced the film and watched it 46 times.
- When Lubitsch was left without a leading lady, Carole Lombard, who had never worked with him and yearned to, heard of his predicament and asked to be considered; he cast her.
- The studio and Lubitsch cast Miriam Hopkins as Jack Benny's co-star to revive her faltering career, but she and Benny did not get along, and she left the production.
- Lubitsch never considered anyone but Jack Benny for the lead and wrote the part with Benny in mind; Benny accepted immediately, thrilled that a director of Lubitsch's caliber had thought of him while writing.
- In 1943 critic Mildred Martin, writing in The Philadelphia Inquirer, attacked Lubitsch's German birth and his comedy about Nazis in Poland; Lubitsch answered with an open letter saying what he had satirized were the Nazis and their ridiculous ideology.
