Benny as Hamlet

After viewing Mel Brooks' take on Hamlet in To Be or Not To Be, I was able to find a copy of Ernst Lubitsch's original film of the same name.  It provided an occasion to see Hamlet (such as it was) one more time as well as to compare and to contrast Brooks' and Lubitsch's works.

The plot of this film is much the same as Brooks' re-make.  It revolves around a Polish theatre company in Nazi-occupied Warsaw.  In this version, the lead characters are Joseph and Maria Tura, played by Jack Benny and Carole Lombard.  Bronski, the lead in Brooks' film, is a secondary player in the troupe, although his imitation of Hitler is spot-on.  The actors use their dramatic wiles to escape from Poland in much the same fashion as the remake, although the Schindler-esque rescue of exiled Jews is absent from this version.

The appearance of Hamlet in this film is slightly modified in the remake.  Tura is the lead in a full-fledged production of Hamlet, not a shortened remix.  As in the remake, though, we are not able to see much beyond the opening of the soliloquy.  It still is distracted repeatedly with members of the audience departing the theatre.

The humor of Lubitsch's original is much more understated than the over-the-top slapstick of Brooks' remake.  Both are enjoyable, but each in its own way.  The original does provide one wonderful quote that did not appear in the remake.  As a die-hard Hamlet fan, I could still relate.

"Even Shakespeare couldn't stand seeing Hamlet three nights in succession."