To Be or Not to Be (1942)

It’s interesting to contrast Ernst Lubitsch’s effort at directly dealing with Nazism against Fritz Lang‘s. Lubitsch had the advantage of leaving Germany in the early 20s, well before the rise of Hitler while Lang left in 1933 right as they claimed power over the legislature and Hitler’s rise to the chancellorship. Lubitsch had a certain distance to what had been going on in his home country, and he was able to thrive in his fantasy versions of Central and Western Europe for more than a decad...