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Created Mar 20, 2013 05:56PM PST • Edited Mar 20, 2013 05:56PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Although “To Be Or Not To Be” is considered to be one of the great film comedies, both its public and critical reception was mixed when it came out.

   Benny and Lombard play a bickering but loving couple who run a theater in Warsaw when the Nazis invade Poland in 1939. What follows is an unlikely but totally infectious screwball comedy with some very serious implications.

   “To Be or Not to Be” is significant in several ways. It was Lombard’s last film. And although Benny was a huge radio star at the time and would continue that run on TV, this is was one of the few movies of his that really show his comic gift except for “Charley’s Aunt”

   It’s also one of director Ernst Lubitch’s better movies.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Both Benny and Lombard give iconic comedic performances. One wonders why Benny didn’t make more movies but Lombard would have made more if she had not died that year in a tragic plane accident on her way back home to California from a war bond rally in her home state of Indiana. But they are ably assisted but a wonderful supporting cast including Felix Bressart who gives Shylock’s speech from “Merchant of Venice” a resonance it never had before or has since.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    There is very little wrong with this movie. Although some film scholars have said Lubitsch had lost his famous “touch” by the time he got to Hollywood it still retai to ns its magic and historical importance.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Really Great 4.5

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.6

    Although tame by today’s standards(okay, I say that a lot) the sight of Jack Benny in a Nazi uniform(as part of a ruse to trick the Nazis) actually offended Benny’s father to the point he walked out on the movie and wouldn’t set foot in a theater for months But he finally saw the whole movie and ended up seeing it more than 40 more times.

17. Sex Innocent 1.4

    Some sexual innuendo for 1942.

18. Violence Fierce 1.8

    Again for 1942, Nazis. Keep in mind this was before D Day.

19. Rudeness Polite 1.5

21. Reality

    Natural 1.0

22. Circumstantial Natural 1.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0