TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942)

Contemporary critics and audiences were shocked when director Ernst Lubitsch released a comedy about the Nazi occupation of Poland, particularly with its depiction of the Third Reich as everyday people who just happen to be monsters. It also has a special poignancy as the last film made by the luminous Carole Lombard before her tragic death at the age of 33. She gives one of her best performances as the leading lady of a theater troupe run by her egotistical husband, Jack Benny, whose attempts to play Hamlet are among the film’s comic highlights. When a young Polish flyer (Robert Stack) — who’s in love with Lombard — discovers a Nazi spy, she enlists her colleagues in a series of clever deceptions to save the Resistance. Benny and Lombard are supported by a superb ensemble of character actors who don a variety of hilarious disguises to help their cause.

d. Ernst Lubitsch, 99m, 35mm

Courtesy of The British National Archive and Shout! Factory.

Print source: BFI National Archive. Premiere of a new 35mm print made in 2021 by the BFI National Archive with funding from the National Lottery, in association with the UCLA Film & TV Archive and The Packard Humanities Institute, and the additional support of donors to the BFI’s Keep Film on Film campaign.

The British Film Institute is the UK’s lead organization for film and the moving image. In 2025 the BFI National Archive turns 90 years old. From preserving early silent films on fragile nitrate film prints to collecting contemporary work via the latest digital innovations; from bringing to life unproduced ‘lost’ works through scripts and production sketches, to caring for the stills and posters of familiar cultural touchstones; and from their holdings of small-scale home videos to the most epic of cinematic odysseys, since 1935 the BFI National Archive has been a gateway to the past, present, and future of screen culture. The BFI National Archive at TCM Classic Film Festival this April, celebrating this major milestone, are presenting a number of rare archive film prints (including nitrate), new 35mm prints and restorations from their collection.