TY - CHAP
T1 - THE COMEDY OF HAMLET IN NAZI-OCCUPIED WARSAW
T2 - AN EXPLORATION OF LUBITSCH’S TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942)
AU - Oya, Reiko
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Cambridge University Press 2019.
PY - 2019/1/1
Y1 - 2019/1/1
N2 - In March 1942, Bosley Crowther, the film critic for the New York Times, was dismayed to see the premiere of Ernst Lubitsch’s comedy film, To Be or Not to Be, which featured a troupe of Polish actors outmanoeuvring the dumb Gestapo and successfully saving the Polish underground. The egomaniacal star couple of the Polski Theatre, Joseph and Maria Tura, were played by the vaudeville and radio entertainer Jack Benny and the ‘queen’ of screwball comedy, Carole Lombard. Crowther resented that the film director made ‘a spy-thriller of fantastic design amid the ruins and frightful oppressions of Nazi-invaded Warsaw’, adding that ‘[t]o say it is callous and macabre is understating the case’.
AB - In March 1942, Bosley Crowther, the film critic for the New York Times, was dismayed to see the premiere of Ernst Lubitsch’s comedy film, To Be or Not to Be, which featured a troupe of Polish actors outmanoeuvring the dumb Gestapo and successfully saving the Polish underground. The egomaniacal star couple of the Polski Theatre, Joseph and Maria Tura, were played by the vaudeville and radio entertainer Jack Benny and the ‘queen’ of screwball comedy, Carole Lombard. Crowther resented that the film director made ‘a spy-thriller of fantastic design amid the ruins and frightful oppressions of Nazi-invaded Warsaw’, adding that ‘[t]o say it is callous and macabre is understating the case’.
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U2 - 10.1017/9781108588072.008
DO - 10.1017/9781108588072.008
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85133089270
SN - 9781108499286
SP - 98
EP - 111
BT - Shakespeare Survey
PB - Cambridge University Press
ER -