There's No Question About Mel Brooks' To Be Or Not To Be!

Quick. What do Mel Brooks (Spaceballs), Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker), Tim Matheson (Animal House), Jose Ferrer (The Caine Mutiny), Charles Durning (Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?,), Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future) and George Gaynes (Police Academy movies) all have in common? Have they attempted Shakespeare? Nice try. Maybe a spoof of Shakespeare? Weelll...

Sort of. In this 1983 remake of 1942’s To Be Or Not To Be (and the superior of the two), Shakespeare’s Hamlet is treated quite seriously by Brooks and another actor who plays Shylock also loves the role. It’s Brooks’ performance of it that isn’t taken seriously by the other actors. If you don’t like Shakespeare, you don’t have to worry about being bored by the short renditions of it and if you do like Shakespeare, you won’t feel offended or disappointed. Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, as well as the heartfelt Shylock philosophizing, work well into the brilliantly-written screwball comedy.

But even though it’s a comedy, there are more than a few scenes that deliberately do not lend themselves to humor. I have absolutely no negative things to say about this clever film that knows to balance the two for greater effect.


The Story


Frederick and Anna Bronski (Brooks and Bancroft) are husband and wife, entertaining all of Warsaw, Poland with their stage numbers in 1939. When they begin a spoof of Hitler, the police force them to abandon it, so then Frederick yells to the stagehand, played by Ronny Graham the movie's screenwriter, “Sondheim! Send in the clowns!”

After the clowns Frederick decides to do his beloved “Highlights from Hamlet” act, beloved to him, that is! When Anna hears that her husband has scheduled that, she sends a note to a handsome, young lieutenant in the audience who obviously has a crush on her. When Frederick says, “To be or not to be…,” then he must come backstage to visit her. His leaving actually inspires Frederick’s performance, hehe.

Before another night has passed, of course Hitler has invaded Poland and chaos ensues. The camera catches the ruin bombs have made of Warsaw and the drastic change in their lives. Frederick agrees to hide a Jewish couple in the theater’s basement. The Gestapo throw him and his wife out of their opulent mansion to set up headquarters so the Bronskis and their toy dog tearfully check into her homosexual dressing assistant’s (James "Gypsy" Haake) “rathole” apartment.

Sad, you're thinking, but wait. The humor begins in earnest when that lieutenant (Matheson) goes off to war and discovers a spy in his unit’s midst, Professor Siletsky (Ferrer), who gladly has accepted from his students the names of their family and friends in the Jewish Underground. He warns his commanders and is sent back to Warsaw to stop Siletsky before he can give the list to the head of the Gestapo, Col. Erhardt, played irrepressibly by Durning.

You know there’s going to be complications by the score with Frederick donning disguises and Anna playing Mata Hari while keeping her husband and lover from killing each other. There’s a murder; bad jokes like Erhardt calling Hitler a pickle and cowering in fear that the Fuhrer will hear; “Heil Hitler!” resorted to every couple of minutes (especially by Lloyd’s nervous Captain Schultz); every man drooling over Anna and the Bronskis fighting to save their gay friend. Plus, wouldn’t you know? Hitler’s coming to town!

You’ll have to rent this on video or DVD to see how this mess all plays out. :-)


Final Comments


I feel like I’ve made this movie sound terribly lame, but, I assure you, it is not. Everything flows perfectly with aplomb and makes sense from beginning to end so that the hundred and seven minutes will have seemed to fly. I watched the original production, also, with Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, but while it charmingly tells this Ernst Lubitsch story in much the same way as the Brooks’ remake, I prefer the droll wit of the remake.

Take the joke about Hitler. In the original he is like cheese rather than a pickle, which must be dated humor. Or the scene where Anna and the Lieutenant first meet and she asks him what he does for fun. In the 1942 version he simply informs her that he loves being a bomber and dropping dynamite. When he’s leaving he says he’s never known an actress before, to which she replies (straight-faced), “I’ve never known a man who could drop two tons of dynamite in two seconds.” Witty, but in the remake he describes flying a bomber “thrusting into the sky” like he’s making love and she acts as if she’s been loved!

Still, both versions shine and if you have time for both, you will enjoy them for their differences here and there. I got a kick out of how in the remake Frederick hurries into Gestapo Headquarters, his former mansion, and innocently wonders of an officer if the place didn’t used to be the Hotel Europa, which it was in the original version.

Alan Johnson flawlessly directs 1983’s To Be Or Not To Be, one of the most enrapturous comedies I’ve seen in a very long time. Cinematographer Gerald Hirshfeld certainly brought out the rich beauty and stark horror of 1939 Poland while Albert Wolsky worked his magic with costume design and John Morris with the score that blended in so well that I can’t criticize it! The fun stage songs were written by Graham and Brooks.

There’s no question about the movie. It’s a five-star movie all the way!