An enthralling and ebullient double bill of two versions of TO BE OR NOT TO BE, Lubitsch's Black & White masterpiece, also famous for being Carole Lombard's swan song before a plane crash brought her away from this world at the prime age of 33, and Mel Brooks' (almost) faithful color remade (although the director title falls on the head of his longtime collaborator Alan Johnson) starring him and his wife Ms. Bancroft. It is the same story being transcribed under two different palettes, the remake owes its tongue-in-cheek drollness greatly to the screenwriter Edwin Justus Mayer of the 1942 version since many one-liners are copied verbatim, both versions are abounding with witty caricatures of Hitler and his Nazi regime, embellishes a tall order in the wartime Warsaw with conspicuous burlesque, a Polish acting troupe's collective endeavour to hunt down a German spy and a subsequent flee from war zone to England, during which a crucial tool is that our hero, the ham actor Joseph Tura (Benny) / Frederick Bronski (Brooks), has to playact different characters, from the spy professor, a Nazi colonel and even Hitler himself (in the remake), to bluff his way out; meanwhile he is also vexed by the budding romance between his actor wife Maria (Lombard) / Anna (Bancroft) and a young aviator Lt. Sobieski (Stack) / Lt. Sobinski (Matheson). But there are also apparent differences which can bear out why Lubitsch's original is a much better piece of work, taking the opening sequences for example, Lubitsch starts with a voice-over narrating an unusual happening in Warsaw before WWII, Adolf Hitler is spotted on the street, then a following revelation reveals that it is after all an act, Hitler is played by a character actor who tries to test his resemblance by walking among the mass, what a pleasant surprise! But in the remake, Mel Brooks doesn't adopt this route, instead, he opens with a vaudeville number SWEET GEORGIA BROWN with Bancroft, a fairly impressive stunt but fails to match Lubitsch's ingenious gambit, later audience will discover, one main reason behind this alteration is that there is no role of the character actor who resembles Hitler in this version, as Brooks himself will disguise as Hitler in the final escape scam, so probably it is a sacrifice to fulfil Brooks' own ego to enlarge his part as the star.For most part, the silver-screen magnetism of the original is beguilingly outstrips the remake's more mundane touch, and being a well-intended fairytale, the mundane touch is unfortunately an impediment particularly in the elongated escape plan, the entire operation feels preposterous with the all the chase (don't let me start on the doggie Mutki's eleventh- hour jump) and what happens to the real Hitler in the theatre, he doesn't feel absurd when clearly no actors are on the stage to perform? In the original, this passage is fast-paced with a whimsical take of the fake Hitler ordering two pilots to jump off the plane without parachutes, to mock Nazi's blind obedience.With all my respect to Brooks and Bancroft, but in the remake, they are just too old for their roles, egregiously jarring is Brooks as young Hamlet in his ridicule titular monologue, seriously? I don't consider myself as an ageist, but this is more than a farce to swallow. Bancroft is two-and-a-half decades past her prime as a seductress in THE GRADUATE (1967, 8/10), her comedic bent can never pass beyond the slinky postures. OK. we get it, it is a family business, let the profit kept within one's own turf. However, a big thumb-up for the remake to introduce an openly gay character Sasha (Haake), Anna's dresser, into the plot, in order to carry through the side-splitting wisecrack "how can a theatre survive without Jews, gays and gypsies?". Also Charles Durning usurps an Oscar-nomination for the remake as Col. Erhardt, but having watched the original first, his farcical rendition feels a shade forced compared with Sig Ruman's effortless spontaneity.In the original, the Lombard-and-Benny pair forms a more organic liaison thanks a lot to the retro flair, she is a classic lady with glamour and dignity, he is somewhat childlike but self- consciously over-proud of his acting, their bickering is crammed with spark and tease, even Robert Stack's handsome pilot is dreamier in the vintage silhouette. All in all, it might be unfair for the remake to be viewed immediately after the original, but also the double-bill viewing is a telling corroboration of why vintage classics can obtain their timeless appeal, nostalgia aside, they are absolutely one-of-a-kind in their visual tactility, their characters' mannerism and the streamlined narrative tactics, if you are into it, you cannot get enough of it, as for the remake, maybe it is just not vintage enough, nothing we can do about that, as least for now.

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.

The older I get, and the more I am exposed to great ideas in film, especially comics in film, the less I tolerate Brooks.That's because he isn't a filmmaker. Never was. He's a vaudevillian, a stage comic. Now, that can be funny, and I suppose he's good at what he does. But there's a magic in cinema, in cinematic humor that bites deeper. Movies have a solvent when done right, a solvent that allows the humor to catalyze change.When you're on a stage, we expect the performer to be different, remote. We even laugh at the remoteness.Consider the film humor of embarrassment. We have a whole industry based on that, dozens of movies a year. They work because we enter the thing and feel embarrassed. That'll never happen with Brooks because he sees these as filmed stage shows.If you watch this, what you'll get is a rather clever acknowledgment of this. At root it is a simple structure: real world with Nazis, stage show with Nazis. (And of course, we chuckle, knowing Brooks' claim to fame is "Springtime for Hitler.") And as the thing goes on, we have the stage show and reality blurring from both ends.Brooks "plays" certain Nazi characters. And as time goes on the Nazis get more and more like stage characters. One device is rather sophisticated, where the real Nazi is made (by Brooks) to appear as a fake. And yes, Jews escaping as clowns from a pretend truck to a real one.At the center of all this is a valentine from Brooks to his wife. She's allowed to mug, and be the irresistible love interest to all heterosexual men, good and bad.If you go into this for laughs, you'll be disappointed. If you go into it as an essay on humor on the stage, you'll find it pretty darn impressive, worthy of the guy who introduced David Lynch to us through "Elephant Man."Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

This remake could not have had a finer cast led the magnificent Mel Brooks and his wife Anne Bancroft. I remembered him saying once that he loved singing and dancing Polish with his wife and now I can see why. They begin the show singing and dancing in Polish. I was surprised by how much they spoke Polish in the beginning. Unlike most Polish depictions, they are not considered to be taken as jokes in this film. They are in Warsaw with their theater troupe. In actuality, Warsaw was destroyed 90% by the war's end so it was probably very unlikely that they could outsmart the Germans but it's not a true story. The Jews wear the yellow Star of Davids and the homosexuals wear the pink triangle. Now the film could have ignored that part of the war but they did not. They wisely incorporated it into the storyline. They remind us of the concentration camps and the certain death that they would have faced. While the stars of the film and the fictional theater troupe, Anne and Frederick Bronski played by Bancroft and Brooks are forced out of their own home to live with their homosexual cast member played memorably by David Haacke in this small one room apartment. The rest of the cast is superb with Charles Durning, Tim Matheson as the young military man in love with Anna, Estelle Reiner, George Gaines, George Wyner, etc. Anne Bancroft is positively beautiful and glowing in her performance. She is truly a star and we know Mel loved her to death and she loved him in life as well. I don't get into the plot because I don't want to spoil it. It's worth watching again and again. Rest in peace, Anne.