Be or Not To Be by Ernst Lubitsch. 
Credits and synopsis. Home playbill.
"If you could write the 'Lubitsch Touch," still exist, but took the secret with him to the grave. It's like the Chinese art of glass blowing, no longer exists. Occasionally, I look for an elegant twist and say, 'How Lubitsch would have done? " And I can think of something, and looks like Lubitsch, but it is Lubitsch. No longer exists "
Billy Wilder
" Conversations with Billy Wilder, Cameron Crowe
, Alianza editorial.
L ubitsch longer exists. This was reaffirmed by the end of his days, in talks with Cameron Crowe known in the nineties, who perhaps sought more admiration for so many years in his movies, his disciple, collaborator and friend, the great Billy Wilder. It reaffirmed, as I say, as much earlier, in itself Lubitsch's funeral in 1947, is well known another conversation with William Wyler, in which the latter declared:
"No more Lubitsch ..." , to which Wilder replied
"Worse still, no more movies Lubitsch ... " If a comedy genius like Billy Wilder sentence twice the extinction of the genius of Lubitsch, a little more able to respond. We can only collate, examine their work and make certain that there has been no such, nor does it appear that you can get someone like that. Not that Lubitsch was the funniest or most ironic, as even the most sophisticated. Simply was the first, the teacher, the most complete.
Ernst Lubitsch (January 28, 1892 - November 30, 1947) was born in Berlin in the heart of a Russian-Jewish family, where he started in theater as an actor in Max Reinhardt's hand, working with actors such as Emil Jannings. About 1913 is claimed as an actor and scriptwriter in the recent German film industry of the Union Films Alliance (UFA), embodying successful comic characters, archetypal Jews of Berlin society, until 1916 when he decided to abandon her acting career in favor of writing and direction of their own films. Lubitsch made in just over 4 years, masterpieces as
The Oyster Princess (Die Austernprinzessin, 1919), Madame Du Barry (1919), The Doll (Die Puppe, 1919), Sumurun (1920), Anne Boleyn (Ann Boleyn, 1920), and The Wildcat (Die Bergkatze, 1921) , among others. After being invited to the United States by Mary Pickford in 1922, Lubitsch, one of the first directors Germans who emigrated to the United States, is underway, with 30 years and a good contract in their pockets, at the hands of Warner, a never abandon country, nationalized as an American soon after, and will work in one of the most important film legacies of American industry. Already
States Working together in several films of his time remarkable move, as
The Marriage Circle (The Marriage Circle, 1924), The frivolity of a Lady (Forbidden Paradise, 1924), The Madness of Charleston (So This Is Paris, 1926), or The Student Prince (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, 1927) , where he specializes in the sophisticated comedy, increasingly sophisticated towards the end of his stage moves. His famous screenplays full of sentimental entanglements and flirtations love, become a more persuasive, paradoxically, with the end of silent films and the arrival of talkies. However, his early films are entirely sound, almost musical. With this, and after falling The curtain of the dumb, Lubitsch must again reinvent their talents to the new musical theater curtain, while his genius toward dialogue and narrative rhythm, with remarkable results in works as interesting as
Eternal Love (Eternal Love) and The Love Parade (The Love Parade), both held in 1929. However, the most important legacy of the films of Lubitsch before the Second World War, would work hand in hand as
If I Had a Million (If I Had A Million, 1932), A Woman for two (Design for living , 1932), The Merry Widow (The Merry Widow, 1934), The Eighth Wife Bluebeard (Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, 1938), or the magnificent
Ninotchka (1939) , featuring an extraordinary Gerta Garbo comedy newcomer. Ninotchka
seems prescient of political satire reflected in the subsequent
Be or Not To Be (To Be or Not to Be, 1942) . During this period the name of Lubitsch would be greatly admired for his swift narrative, a sense of ellipsis, subtle irony and suggestive eroticism with which outlined his films. While among professional colleagues, was given a distinctive name to the set of qualities that seasoned their scripts and staging, the
famous "Lubitsch touch." 
Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) plays Hamlet in one of the iconic sequences "To be or not to be" outraged by the subsequent abandonment of a spectator in the second row, after hearing famous first verse of the same name to the title of the film. One of the many samples of the enigmatic "Lubitsch touch."
But
What is the "Lubitsch touch"? . The eternal question with no firm response from many fans and historians of the great Berlin. Again, Billy Wilder, his most brilliant disciple, and whose release is said to be hung for years a sign with the phrase
"How would Lubitsch?" , said the purpose of
"Lubitsch touch" :
"It was smart use of the superbroma. One was a joke, and that was enough, but then there was another even bigger joke over it. " Lubitsch, who admired the films of other filmmakers of his generation as Charles Chaplin and Swedish Mauritz Stiller, on his arrival to American industry, would account for these and many others, his talent for suggestion, refining their own . This, coupled with his work in Berlin with his personal staging, transit through the musical and brilliant dashes of intrigue, finally led to the famous
"Lubitsch touch" , indestructible weapon against censorship, in which only need to show a
2 on one side and another 2
other hand, for the sum is evident in the viewer, without showing any number more, much less a 4
. However, to get an idea in the Lubitsch film, a 2 +2
, always followed by a 4 +4
, as Wilder called the superbroma, a succession of gags in crescendo, which feed each other suggestively. Whereupon, the pace and sequence of gags is endless. All of this an elegant staging and a latent eroticism, studied for years by many, and nobody seems to be able to match.
International Posters.
This would have its greatest exponent in the top creative talent Lubitsch in
Be or Not to Be, the 1942 film presented today at the
series devoted to "The Satire on War ", and that includes other titles such as
The Great Dictator (The Great Dictator, 1940) Charles Chaplin , Phone Red. We flew to Moscow (Dr.Strangelove, 1964) Stanley Kubrick and
MASH (1970) Robert Altman .
And it is very important to note the year of production
Be or Not to Be, 1941, and his debut, 1942, since, without doubt, the movie
"real time", more satirical Nazism and the invasion of Poland. To be or not to be
is a very unusual film in what had been customary in the films of Lubitsch, slightly preceded in context of political sarcasm
Ninotchka, in 1939. Atypical film for its obvious character Nazi propaganda, and its dramatic scenes, although rare, unusual in the American stage director of Berlin. However, even with the hand extended by the producer Alexander Korda, censorship was more than possible, especially, and ironically, in the field of love flirting in a War on American society, whose moral principles are founded on his image family and marriage. Lubitsch manages to flip through unobjectionable all these moral values \u200b\u200bof American stagnant, always heightened in states of war. And it does with its magnificent
"touch" and a subtle use of narrative ellipses.
Marriage Tura, brilliantly played by Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, gave off a great chemistry interpretation, which unfortunately was not replicated after the disappearance of Carole Lombard in January 1942, shortly before the premiere of "To be or not to be."
In
Be or Not to Be, the theater company "Polski in Warsaw led by
" big, big " Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) and his wife, Maria Tura (Carole Lombard), also famous actress of the Polish capital, perform the play "Gestapo", a parody of Nazism and its secret service. In the Jewish theater group, are Bronski actors (Tom Dugan), with a striking resemblance to the Führer, and Greenberg (Felix Bressart), who dreams interpret
monologue Shylock in The Merchant of Venice " of Shakespeare, and finally manages to play against Hitler himself, at least, in the end, it really is your partner Bronski "in the outcome of the film. In the theater company, the long-suffering stage manager constantly trying to get off the fumes of vain actors in a series of gags in the style of Lubitsch comedy. However, the joke is more acidic and hilarious, after finding that the alleged actors of overacting so much in the skin of the real members of the Gestapo. Following the censorship of the work, the company is relegated to represent only the parallel work in progress,
"Hamlet" of Shakespeare , where the long monologue that plays the role of Hamlet, Joseph Tura, is used by his wife to flirting with a young airman in the Polish Army Sobinski (Robert Stack). From this presentation, and after the invasion of Warsaw by the Nazis, Lubitsch delight in the hilarious situations to conflict with their own Gestapo, the three involved in the sentimental plot, playing with the priorities of the actors, who put its relations with the war in most of times, thereby achieving, Lubitsch, one more than the subtle purposes of the film, expressing his disdain for the invaders and the threat of Nazism. The role of comedians in the resistance becomes necessary after discovering the plans of the traitor Professor Siletzsky (Stanley Ridges) within the Nazi party. From there, latent brightest moments of the film, the thin line shown persuasively by Lubitsch in the exchange of identities between players and members of the Gestapo, in a mythical unstoppable rhythm sequences, among which are included interpretations Joseph Tura parodying the teacher herself or irritating Siletzky Colonel Ehrhardt (Sig Ruman), with its constant diversion responsibility to his subordinate Captain Schultz (Henry Victor)-another point of witty satire disguised as a comedy about the reality of the Nazi hierarchy, until the arrival of the Fuehrer to Warsaw to take advantage of the actors to mingle with the Nazis and eventually escape to England .
The sequences in
Be or Not To Be , is an authentic piece of jewelry. Based on the classic division of the film in three acts, there are a prologue before the Nazi invasion of Warsaw, the explosion of the war (at the top of the sense of gag Lubitsch, with a multitude of interactions between characters in a spiral direction) and outcome in the flight to England actors. Right from the prologue we witness the presentation of the protagonists in a succession of some of the best gags of the film, as a true statement of principles comic
bathed in the "Lubitsch touch." From the opening sequence, with the presentation of Hitler in Warsaw before the Nazi invasion, to the presentation of the actors as actors theater group, concluded a first set of presentations which alludes to the fictional as the shadow of real, and that would complete later characters like the Colonel Ehrhardt, to "reinterpret" their own role, played by exactly the same as Joseph Tura above. Lubitsch plays constantly during the first half with the relationship between the personality of the actors and their interpretations, whose fusion of vanities and cravings lead in the most hilarious film. Lubitsch touch with his armed only get to deduct a logical behavior of the Nazi hierarchy, and get it cleared items as if it were a mathematical equation. Thus, the two sides of the film, the group of actors and the Nazi invaders, conflicted by the parody of the vanities of both, and the destabilization of course a moral order and hierarchy of others toward the viewer . However, in Be prepared script or not to be
, continually omitted dramatic departure from the historical moment, something that irritated then a certain sector of the Jewish population. But Lubitsch did not need such weapons, and the tragedy is so deductible as its elaborate gags.
special mention to the fabulous cast of
be or not to be headed by married couples who plays Tura, Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, assisted by a class side like Robert Stack and Sig Ruman. The gorgeous couple that gives life to the vain marriage of actors, Tura, is one of the highlights of the film with her vital representation of the daily routine in a marriage Celebrity actors, with their strengths and weaknesses, flirting and jealousy.
Jack Benny is the actor Joseph Tura. Above we see him playing Hamlet, and supplanting the Colonel Ehrhardt and Professor Siletzsky. is especially delicious interpretation of the fabulous Carole Lombard, since its first staging a sophisticated evening dress until the last plane of the film.
Unfortunately, Carole Lombard, "married in real life with Clark Gable, with a brilliant career ahead of him," would suffer a tragic plane crash, which would perish with their parents and the rest of crew, months before the premiere of the film, January 16, 1942, at the age of 33.
After the unexpected accident that claimed the lives of the extraordinary actress, Lubitsch was forced to correct a line of original installation, excluding a scene of flirtation between Maria Tura and Lieutenant Sobinski, an unwelcome line in which Lombard expressed ironically against the young airman:
"What can happen on an airplane?" After nearly 70 years after its premiere,
Be or Not To Be preserves intact its ability to suggestion and continues to be one of the most studied references in the comic History of Cinema. The
"Lubitsch touch" retains all the freshness of his sense of humor sophisticated narrative ellipses elegant and subtle performances. A weapon that continues to be invincible to the ongoing attempt to pervert the cinematic backdrop, unable to fight against the obvious. Lubitsch, far ahead of time, which
"touch" is yet to decipher, behind the mask of sophisticated comedies.
among us, and with all due respect to Mr. Wilder, Lubitsch there ... better yet, his films there.
Javier Ballesteros
------------------------
Dialogues video.
all started in
headquarters of the Gestapo in Berlin ...
- Heil Hitler!
- Heil (yawn) Hitler! Heil!
- Colonel Wilhelm
Cunsac we have here. If you will examine your file. I hope
talk.
- will be better for him. Make it happen!
- Yes, sir.
-
Wilhan Cunsac! (Repeat your name in the hallway)
- (Enter a child) Heil Hitler!
- (repeat both together) Heil Hitler!
- Ja, ja, ja!
I have understood you want a colored box to play, eh?
- Yes, my father has promised me if
got good grades.
- But our Fuehrer has
aware of your good grades and asked me give you just what you wanted.
-
Heil Hitler!
- Heil Hitler!
- Heil Hitler!
- Ja, ja, ja!
Are you going to tell your father who gave it to you, right?
- Of course, our
Führer.
- then he will want a bit more to our Führer, right?
-
Secure!
- He does not like it, do you, Wilhelm?
- No, not like.
- and sometimes even funny things on his mind, right?
-
I only said that a Brandi was given the name Napoleon, a Bismarck herring that of
and end up giving his name a. ..
- A cheese
- Yes!
-
Do you know how?
- Well ... it's a natural deduction.
- A natural deduction
?
- Well, I ... I hope you do not get me wrong. I
Colonel, I've always been ... will, I hope you will not doubt me. "Heil Hitler!
- Heil Hitler!
- HeilHitler!
(Outside the room is heard
"Heil Hitler!". Opens the door and announce "The Führer!")
- Heil Hitler!
cried the three at a time.
- Heil myself! ...
Bonus.
Bullet.
Official Gazette of Navarre 
Nternational 
