(c) TV gems
With film plea by Milena Täschner
Warsaw, 1939: Air Force officer Sobinski is tasked with preventing the spy Prof. Siletzky from handing over a list of the names of members of an underground organisation to the Gestapo. With the help of a theatre troupe, he manages to lure the professor into a trap and kill him. But there is a copy of the list…
This comedy, which combines elements of a thriller and black humour, is based on the play *Poland Is Not Yet Lost* – the title of the Polish national anthem – by the Hungarian playwright Melchior Lengyel.
Whilst *To Be or Not to Be* was the subject of heated debate upon its release, it is now regarded by film critics as a brilliant comedy classic.
“From this material—part cuckold farce, part resistance drama and part (if there were a third part) theatrical farce—the European émigré has created the most perfect Hollywood comedy ever, a blend of frivolity and morality, of political wit and decadence. A film that reverses and mirrors all its situations so often that the lowest becomes the highest; a film that, with a fake Hitler, captured the real one more aptly than he could ever have been – perhaps with the exception of Chaplin’s Great Dictator.” Hellmuth Karasek, Der Spiegel
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©1942 by the United Artists Corporation, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
