Word: humors
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...long laughed at the wit of its son, and it is only fair that meanwhile its son shoudl have been storing up laughs at Harvard. Professors, students and the University life itself are all the subjects of his probing pen, which seems to have only to seek to find humor...
...haven't seen the picture or the show, as you do about Alexander Woolcott's glee in having a play written about his thousand-and-one ways to lose friends and alienate people. If he doesn't sue the authors for libel, he has either a magnificent sense of humor or such atrocious manners that he deserves having Kaufmann and Hart throw verbal darts...
...Ernst Lubitsch's new farce, a very comic idea made acutely uncomfortable because the locale of the picture is Warsaw during the German occupation of Poland. In "Ninotchka" Lubitsch ribbed the foibles of the Russians and their Five Year Plan with great humor and relish. But the same formula is not successful in the present picture, for there is something too agonizingly real about the military genius of the Germans in the past three years to make them effective butts for farcical humor. Actually, in all recent war films, Hollywood has shown a propensity to have the Gestapo foiled...
...certainly indicate that a highly palatable movie is in order. "To Be Or Not To Be" attempts to be a delightful and implausible tale of intrigue, spies, Gestapo and such, moulded about the tragic downfall of Poland in 1939. Like Charlie Chaplin's ill-fated "The Great Dictator" its humor is based on ridiculing Hitler and the overly efficient machinations of the Gestapo. Whether the current film is your dish or not depends upon your ability to laugh at situations founded on material which is essentially tragedy, such as the bombing of Warsaw...
Perhaps Jack Benny is no great shakes at Hamlet, but his Josef Tura is a beautiful piece of comic playing, especially when he impersonates the envoy and various Gestapo chiefs. Miss Lombard plays with consummate skill, warmth and humor. One forgets this is her last role, so compelling and captivating is her performance. The supporting cast is tops, particularly Felix Bressart, as a frustrated spear carrier, who dreams of playing Shylock; and Tom Dugan who turns in a wonderfully ludicrous impersonation of Hitler...