The sophisticated beauty sits behind
closed doors. What is not said, what is implied, what is suggested,
what is alluded and never truly disclosed into certainty always
possesses an ultimate power impossible to question.
To
Be or Not To Be
(Ernst
Lubitsch, 1942) belongs
to this world of manners or, if you want, to this world of
(cinematographically speaking) ellipses: all
knowing, but not revealing and never needing to.
In
occupied Poland, the theatre company of Warsaw tricks the SS and
saves the East European anti-Nazi movement.
The film is a symphony of spiralling
situations, where hilarious seemingly unsolvable problems are
suddenly resolved with ingenious and unexpected interventions that
only exacerbate, though, new comical problems.
Fallacy and misconception are
enclosed in a carefully inter-twined plot exploring the theme of
appearance and reality, and how they (appearance and reality) are so
amusingly, yet dramatically interchangeable.
To
Be or Not To Be
is THE comedy of manners: generated by Lubitsch's touch
and generating moving scenes together with double-entendres and...
...
TERRIFIC
LAUGHS.
