An Ernst Lubitsch Film Season? ‘Not To Be’ Missed

Meyer Kubelsky sat down in a theater back in 1942 to watch a new feature from United Artists, a war picture that featured Hollywood starlet Carole Lombard. What kind of movie picture would it be given the title’s Shakespearean provenance? Something classy, perhaps, but Kubelsky didn’t stay in his seat for long. Upon seeing the male lead wearing a Nazi uniform, he left the theater in a rage. Imagine — his son, the actor, donning the vestments of a group set on the destruction of his people. This was too much to bear.Benjamin Kubelsky, better known to the world as Jack Benny, convinced his father to give the film another try. The paterfamilias did so and came around to not only applaud “To Be Or Not To Be” (1942), but, according to some reports, see it 45 times. Not many people bothered to watch the movie one time upon its release “To Be Or Not To Be,” a comedy about National Socialism released during wartime is a thing you couldn’t possibly laugh about. Director Ernst Lubitsch, working from a screenplay by Edwin Justice Mayer, had, it seemed, lost his vaunted “touch.”If Lubitsch’s inability to read the culture wasn’t enough to keep cinemagoers away, try marketing a comedy a month after the death of its lead actress. Lombard, age 33, was returning from a war bond drive when the plane in which she was traveling crashed in a Nevada desert. Rumor had it that she was to appear on the Jack Benny Show not soon thereafter. A distraught Benny cancelled that week’s edition of his popular radio program. Sometimes the show must not go on.“To Be Or Not To Be” is among a baker’s dozen of Lubitsch films to be shown at Film Forum, from today, under the rubric of, what else, “The Lubitsch Touch.” The emphasis will be on the director’s sound films; Lubitsch, it should be remembered, began his career in 1914 — and an impressive run it is. “Trouble in Paradise” (1932), “Design for Living” (1933), “Ninotchka” (1939), “The Shop Around the Corner” (1940), and that’s only a few of the films whose vitality exceeded their maker’s expectations. “A movie — any movie, good or bad,” Lubitsch said, “ends up in a tin can in a warehouse; in ten years it’s dust.”Lubitsch was born in Germany. His father was a Russian emigre, a tailor by trade, and his mother, a native Berliner. As a young man, Ernst was attracted to the theater, going on to work for Max Reinhardt’s famed theater company, and studying under the comic actor, Victor Arnold. Lubitsch’s first film appearance was in a supporting role in a 1913 comedy short, but he took up directing the next year, with the now-lost “Miss Soapsuds” (1914). He came to the U.S. in 1922 at the behest of Mary Pickford, subsequently fell out with “America’s Sweetheart,” stayed on Stateside, and thrived with the advent of sound.A series of musicals, the most noteworthy of which featured Maurice Chevalier, earned him accolades as well as a couple of Oscar nominations. But “Trouble in Paradise” (1932) was something else: a sophisticated comedy in which no participant is bereft of sin. Herbert Marshall is a thief, Miriam Hopkins picks pockets, and Kay Francis is rich but nobody’s fool. The acting and script are delicious, not least because its notion of eroticism includes restraint and blessed wit.“Ninotchka” was famously marketed with the tag line “Garbo laughs!” But, in the end, Greta Garbo’s tears are more convincing in what is a somewhat ungainly, but mostly perfect film about international skullduggery, Communist hypocrisy, and how love can melt the iciest of hearts. Many would argue that this film was Lubitsch’s finest moment. “To Be Or Not To Be” offers tough competition in its tale of a Polish theatrical troupe on a secret wartime mission. Lombard is incandescent, Benny is surprisingly vulnerable, and Lubitsch — well, Lubitsch created a comedy that, to quote the Bard, “age cannot wither her, nor custom stale.”

An Ernst Lubitsch Film Season? ‘Not To Be’ Missed

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