Fiction
DVD
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2 videodiscs (99 min.) : sound, black and white ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 booklet (23 pages : illustrations ; 18 cm.)
ISBN/ISSN
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Criterion collection #670
NOTES
Originally produced as a motion picture in 1942
As nervy as it is hilarious, a masterpiece from Ernst Lubitsch, To Be Or Not To Be; is a Hollywood film of the boldest black humor, which went into production soon after the U.S. entered World War II. Lubitsch manages to brilliantly balance political satire, romance, slapstick, and urgent wartime suspense in a comic high-wire act that has never been equaled
Special features: Disc 1: Audio commentary featuring film historian David Kalat. Disc 2: Lubitsch le patron (a 2010 French documentary written by film scholar N.T. Binh and directed by Jean-Jacques Bernard, traces the career of filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch); Pinkus's shoe palace (1916 film starring Ernst Lubitsch as a slapstick Jewish sterotype); The Screen Guild Theater (two episodes of the radio anthology series: Variety (1940) and To Be or Not to Be (1943)). Booklet features an essay by critic Geoffrey O'Brien and a 1942 New York Times op-ed by Lubitsch
Production designed by Vincent Korda ; photographed by Rudolph Maté ; musical score by Werner R. Heymann ; interior decoration, Julia Heron ; costumes, Irene ; film editor, Dorothy Spencer
Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Stanley Ridges, Sig Ruman, Tom Dugan
DVD, 1.37:1 aspect ratio, PCM mono, NTSC, Region 1
English dialogue; English subtitles. SDH