Sein oder Nichtsein

I loved the Benny/Lombard version but Brookes and Bancroft are so personable you cannot help but love this. Durning was so funny and Christopher Lloyd was great....

I liked it.

Rather than a satire of a film classic like Frankenstein or a genre of films like the western was done in Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks chose for the one and only time to do a remake of an already very funny film with the classic To Be Or Not To Be. 40 years later the Brooks remake has lost none of the laughs from the original, in fact Brooks could now talk about things unmentionable when Hollywood was under the Code.

The 1942 original film that starred Jack Benny, Carole Lombard, and Robert Stack in the roles that Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, and Tim Matheson play here, was a sophisticated comedy that was not well received when first out, many thought the Nazis were no subject to joke about during wartime. Over time it gained acceptance as yet another of the masterpieces that Ernest Lubitsch did over his career. It may have been Jack Benny's best big screen performance. It was also Carole Lombard's farewell performance.

Benny's comedy was droll, Brooks's humor hits you with a sledgehammer. Still the different approach works out in this remake. Anne Bancroft is more than a good substitute for Carole Lombard, in fact she's as funny in this as Lombard ever was on the screen.

Many years ago one of my supervisors knew Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft and he told us at work that her image as a great dramatic actress, whose two career roles are in The Graduate and The Miracle Worker was a total fabrication. Mel Brooks he said was as zany a man in private as he was in film. But he also said that Bancroft was even zanier than he was and had few times to display that in public. In that sense the two were a perfectly matched couple. My supervisor said he lived in the same building as they did in Greenwich Village and got to know both of them.

Mel Brooks got to show the effect of the Holocaust to come on gays in one of the first films to acknowledge that publicly. One of the touching performances in the supporting cast is by James Haake as Sascha the dresser for Bancroft who gets a one way ticket to a concentration camp, but the trip gets put on hold permanently by his friends in the theater. Charles Durning also does well as Gestapo head in Warsaw who gets constantly bamboozled almost like World War II era film Nazis by Brooks's ingenuity and his theater troupe who give the best performances of their lives. And we can't forget Jose Ferrer adding yet another ethnic group to his repertoire as the Polish traitor Siletsky.

If you're not a fan of Mel Brooks you will become one after you see any of his films. And this review is dedicated to the late Robert Peregoff, one of my supervisors at work who provided me the insights I got into the Brooks-Bancroft screen and life partnership.

This is the great Mel Brooks at his best!.

He revisits this classic film and makes it even crazier than the original, adding a lot of new stuff... (there are 3 numbers where Mel dances and sings, there are clowns, jews and a homosexual hairdresser pursued by the evil and stupid nazis.)

All the actors in this movie, and I mean ALL, are just terrific.

I´d like to state that this is not a remake of the Ernst Lubistch classic, (at least that´s my opinion), to me this is a tribute to the great director and his masterpiece.

I´ve watched the Lubistch "To be or not to be" a lot of times for it´s one of my favorite films, and the Mel Brooks version is completely different from the original. It was made the Brooks way, which I really adore.

So watch this film, you´ll have a lot of fun and won´t stop laughing.

Oh, just one more thing...

This is an asking to 20th Century Fox: When you decide to release this movie in DVD, include the absolutely amazing video-clip: "To be or not to be - Hitler Rap" performed by Mel Brooks please!!. I can assure you that a lot of people will buy it just for that.

(9 out of 10)

Actually, when interviewed about this movie, Mel Brooks said it was an homage to Jack Benny. And if you look, the Bronskis live on Kubelsky Street, Benny Kubelsky is Jack Benny's real name. There are many other touches that also show Brooks' love for the original. Anne Bancroft is a true treat. Her comedic talents shine, she was truly a rare actress, and will be missed.

It was well done, with Mel Brooksian flair, and respectful of the original. I won't add comments about the acting, there are so many pros and cons at this point, one more won't make a difference. But if you have some free time, see BOTH of the movies. It's not sacrilege to like them both.

This remake of Ernst Lubitsch's wartime comedy has often been dismissed as a ham-fisted and unnecessary vanity exercise. This is grossly unfair, as the Brooks' version is in fact a deft and funny comedy that stands up well in comparison to its forebear. Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft make their own the roles of the Bronskis, a Warsaw theatrical duo ("world famous in Poland")who star in revues at the Bronski theatre. When war breaks out the Bronskis become brood-hens to an ever-growing community of Jewish refugees while staying one step ahead of the Nazis. Brooks and Bancroft are fine in the roles of the battling Bronskis, particularly Mel Brooks who finds a touching level of vulnerability beneath the bombast and bluster of Frederick Bronski. Despite the farcical and improbable plot twists, the narrative is sound and genuine pathos registers throughout the film. Those with fond memories of Jack Benny and Carole Lombard in the lead roles may have boycotted this on first release, but they have denied themselves a rare treat - a sure-footed and genuinely entertaining film.