AGFA August: To Be or Not to Be
August 26, 2024
Screwball masterpiece from Ernst Lubitsch (Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner) starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard as husband-and-wife thespians in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who become caught up in a dangerous spy plot.
Even today it seems shocking that, in 1942, Lubitsch satirized occupied Warsaw with a spirited cast including Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, foiling Nazis who crack jokes about concentration camps and careening through harrowing complications like an air raid, a fatal shooting and buffoonery with a corpse. It's all served up with that celebrated "Lubitsch touch”, which employed elegance and wit to create civilized entertainments even in the darkest of settings.
- Director: Ernst Lubitsch
- Principal Cast: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Stanley Ridges, Sig Ruman
- Country: USA
- Year: 1942
- Running Time: 99 min.
- Producer: Ernst Lubitsch
- Screenplay: Edwin Justus Mayer
- Cinematographers: Rudolph Maté
- Editors: Dorothy Spencer
- Music: Werner R. Heymann
- Filmography: Ninotchka (1939), The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
- Language: English