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To Be or Not to Be (1942)

Rate: 7
Viewed: 5/24

ToBe42
5/24: To Be or Not to Be is a strange film.

Admittedly, I got spoiled after seeing the remake first, so I knew what to expect from start to finish. I'll say the script is well done, but none of it is believable. The acting is decent for the most part. In her final film role before dying in a plane crash at age 33, Carole Lombard isn't much of a thespian while Jack Benny is merely okay. However, calling them Polish is ludicrous.

Given the movie was made in 1942 when WWII and Nazism were already underway, the satire is done in bad taste. There's absolutely no doubt of it to the people who lived in Poland at the time and were pretty much being killed left and right. At least, To Be or Not to Be rightly failed at the box office. Those in charge of filmmaking just needed to apply common sense.

All in all, every time the line "So they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt!" is uttered, To Be or Not to Be looks worse because what happened during the Holocaust wasn't funny.