To Be or Not To Be **** (1983, Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft) – Classic Movie Review 1944

Director Alan Johnson’s surprisingly entertaining and successful 1983 remake of the classic 1942 Jack Benny-Carole Lombard World War Two wartime comedy drama stars Mel Brooks and his wife Anne Bancroft. It is the first time they star-teamed together and proves an ideal vehicle for them. Produced by Brooks for his company Brooksfilms, this is his favourite.

They play the ham actor/manager Frederick Bronski and his wife Anna, who lead a Polish acting troop in an attempt to stop the Nazis from gaining vital information from a traitor spy and help the Polish underground.

With a screenplay by Thomas Meehan and Ronny Graham based pretty faithfully and respectfully on the original 1942  by Edwin Justus Mayer, this wartime comedy is lots of fun, some of it serious fun. Some of the dialogue is taken word-for-word from the original.

It provides an ideal opportunity for allows Brooks to lampoon Hitler and the Nazis in his inimitable way, as heartfelt as it is both zany and funny. There is a good-hearted spirit and a nice sense of fun, as well as many big laughs, along with a couple of pauses for well-judged, poignant moments. Of course the piece has long since lost it topicality but not the potency of its important messages.

It rousingly played by the excellent, manically performing stars and the delicious supporting cast headed by Tim Matheson, Charles Durning, José Ferrer, James Haake, George Gaynes, Christopher Lloyd, George Wyner, Jack Riley, Lewis J Stalden, Ronny Graham and Estelle Reiner.

This is also important as the first Hollywood studio film explicitly to refer to the inclusion of gay men in the groups condemned to the Nazi death camps. The Germans used pink triangles to identify ‘sexual deviants’, predominantly homosexuals.

Brooks served as a corporal in the US army in North Africa in World War Two, defusing land mines before the infantry moved in. A graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

Most of the main character names are changed. Brooks plays the Jack Benny role changed from Joseph Tura to Frederick Bronski, Bancroft plays the Carole Lombard role changed from Maria Tura to Anna Bronski and Matheson plays the Robert Stack part changed from Stanislav Sobinski to Andre Sobinski.

A street sign reads Kubelski Avenue. Jack Benny’s real name is Benny Kubelski.

Brooks and Bancroft’s opening song-and-dance number is a comic reprise in Polish of an old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers song-and-dance number.

Anne Bancroft (Anna Maria Louise Italiano) died from uterine cancer on June 6 2005, aged 73. Her son Max Brooks was born in 1972.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1944

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/