AGFA August: To Be or Not to Be
August 26, 2024
Acting couple Joseph and Maria Tura are managing a theatrical troupe when the Nazis invade Poland. Using their skill for impersonation, Joseph and company must confuse the Nazis and stop Siletsky from handing over the list.
Tickets on sale August 1.
Even today it seems shocking that, in 1942, Lubitsch satirized occupied Warsaw with a spirited cast including Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, foiling Nazis who crack jokes about concentration camps and careening through harrowing complications like an air raid, a fatal shooting and buffoonery with a corpse. It's all served up with that celebrated "Lubitsch touchâ, which employed elegance and wit to create civilized entertainments even in the darkest of settings.
- Director: Ernst Lubitsch
- Principal Cast: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Stanley Ridges, Sig Ruman
- Country: USA
- Year: 1942
- Running Time: 99 min.
- Producer: Ernst Lubitsch
- Screenplay: Edwin Justus Mayer
- Cinematographers: Rudolph Maté
- Editors: Dorothy Spencer
- Music: Werner R. Heymann
- Filmography: Ninotchka (1939), The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
- Language: English