To Be or Not to Be

To Be or Not to Be (1942) is Ernst Lubitsch's black comedy, and you can watch it online on iFILM. A Warsaw theater troupe ends up matching wits with the Gestapo, armed with nothing but costumes, wigs and pure nerve.

Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) is a vain leading man; his wife Maria (Carole Lombard) quietly entertains a smitten young pilot. The signal that the dressing room is clear is Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech — and the admirer walks out of the audience on exactly those words, to the actor's outrage. Then the Nazis occupy Poland, and the same actors are drafted into a real plot to stop an enemy spy, impersonating SS officers and even a colonel, where one blown line means a firing squad.

Lubitsch made the film at the height of the war and dared to mock Hitler in 1942 itself — first attacked for it, later canonized. It was Carole Lombard's final role. Stream To Be or Not to Be (1942) online on iFILM.