Now that Congress is leaving Hollywood alone to make war movies, the only question is when there is going to be a good one. For war comedy, Ernst Lubitsch’s “To Be or Not to Be” is mildly amusing. The story is complex as hell, but undoubtedly has to do with the adventures of a Polish Shakespearean troupe and the German Gestapo during the fall of Poland. There is a lot of maneuvering of people and scenes to get laughs which sound more like titters. Such manipulation leads to the kind of laugh that comes from a gag-line and not from something inherently funny in the situation. Also they haven’t decided yet whether to make Jack Benny a comedian or a juvenile, and there is nothing so perilous and uncertain as Benny walking seriously across the screen. Still, as a Shakespearean tragedian he makes a nice stooge for such things as “What you are I wouldn’t eat.” After developing into one of Hollywood’s best actresses, Carole Lombard wasn’t given much to bow out on, being there for the Lubitsch touch and to fall in love with the bomber pilot because he’s the only man she ever knew who could drop three tons of dynamite in two minutes. Funny lines, with people moving into position to say them.
On a more serious level, the latest English epic, “The Invaders,” attempts to incorporate all the evils of Nazism into an exciting adventure film. It takes two hours in the telling, a superb cast of male actors, most of eastern Canada to chase around in, and behind it the London Philharmonic Orchestra for noise written by Ralph Vaughan Williams. And after all of that, it is still an elongated educational film without excitement, which wanders too far for any sustaining interest or unity. The idea is to show the Nazi menace from every conceivable angle; to accomplish so much message “The Invaders” comes up with an ingenious story technique—six German submarine survivors fleeing across the democratic lands of Canada to reach the neutral (before Pearl Harbor) United States. How they got into such a pickle seems very unwarlike—their submarine ran out of oil and supplies and was blown up in Hudson’s Bay.
For propaganda purposes this set-up is just the thing, what with the endless situations it affords for showing the contrast between Nazi and democrat. As for making a picture, the technique defeats itself by having to use the Nazis as the central characters. It cannot have the audience’s sympathies with the Nazis, who therefore must lack humor, warmth and daring—the qualities that make adventurers fun to watch. So it adds up to a pretty dull cops-and-robbers routine. In addition, the continual change of locale and characters wears out your pleasure. Situations like that at Hudson’s Bay are built carefully and well, with regard to environment and people. But no sooner is it all set up and you get to like the place than the Nazis have to move on. And you keep wishing you were back in Hudson’s Bay where you left Laurence Olivier, French-Canadian trapper, dialect and all, acting all over the place. This touch-and-go procedure becomes very embarrassing when, at the three-quarter mark, you come to a lake in the wilderness of Canada, and who should be rowing on the lake but Leslie Howard as big as life—fishing. Still, the picture tells the Nazis off, and that’s worth doing when the telling is as adult as this.
“Churchill’s Island” is a superb documentary two-reeler, the first in a series called “The World in Action,” dealing with war strategies as they affect the United Nations. This one has to do with the British and their defense against invasion. Very honest presentation, with incredibly fine photography and news-reeling. Here you see the real thing—both inside a fighting Spitfire and an attacking German submarine (this from German sources), grim shots of sea casualties. In other words, the war as it really is.
March 23, 1942