However one defines it, “To Be or Not To Be” is a prime example of The Lubitsch Touch. My take on that elusive phrase has come to define Lubitsch’s sophistication, metaphorical wit, and use of the unexpected, all used while shaping characters and telling stories indirectly, often making a game of sex, class and/or politics. That was The Lubitsch Touch”), Andrew Sarris ("A counterpoint of poignant sadness during a film's gayest moments”), or Richard Christiansen (" The Lubitsch Touch is a brief description that embraces a long list of virtues: sophistication, style, subtlety, wit, charm, elegance, suavity, polished nonchalance and audacious sexual nuance”). You had a joke, and you felt satisfied, and then there was one more big joke on top of it - the joke you didn't expect. Ten film critics, historians, or filmmakers will give you ten different definitions of The Lubitsch Touch – such as Billy Wilder ("It was the elegant use of the Superjoke. Originally a marketing ploy by Hollywood executives to capitalize on his popularity, the term stuck, and anyone who watches his films begins to recognize a distinct, yet almost indescribable style. His work was so unique that the phase The Lubitsch Touch quickly emerged. Lubitsch brought a nuanced style, visual wit, modern psychology and worldliness to movies, and was one of a handful of early filmmakers who elevated the form into art. The clever manner in which this bold comedic romp is told has made “To Be or Not to Be” a masterpiece, and it could only have been accomplished so adroitly by one person, Ernst Lubitsch. Sexual and wartime metaphors blend in clever double talk, egos are boosted and deflated, and the lines between theatricality and reality blur as the fate of a country sits in the hands of a company of vain actors who only want to play great parts. To stop him, the actors must employ all the tricks of their trade such as acting, improvisation, makeup, props, costumes, and even lifting dialogue from Shakespeare. Their goal is to prevent Nazi spy “Professor Alexander Siletsky” from giving the Gestapo names and addresses of the resistance. The two carry on an affair as war breaks out, and as an unwitting result, they and the troupe find themselves working with the Polish resistance to save their country. The suitor is the handsome young Polish airman, “Lieutenant Stanislav Sobinski”, who is in love with the married actress. During their production of William Shakespeare's “Hamlet” (played by “Joseph”), “Maria” accepts an invitation to meet a man who keeps sending her flowers, and instructs him to visit her in her dressing room when “Hamlet” delivers his “To be or not to be” soliloquy. Its plot begins in August 1939 on the eve of the German invasion of Poland, and is set amongst a Warsaw theater troupe of hammy actors headed by husband and wife divas “Joseph” and “Maria Tura”.
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