The other thing people keep asking me is what I mean when I say “movie that changed my life.” The title’s hyperbole, of course. I mean, what changes your life for real? Having a child, deaths of loved ones, job changes, these are the things that change your life. Certainly not movies. Movies are little pieces of art or entertainment or something in between, surely nothing that can change your life.
Well, maybe not your life.
For me, watching a movie is kind of like falling in love. Any love affair worth its salt changes the way you look at things because it makes you buy into another person’s point of view, and if that happens, even if it happens for only a moment, your world’s rocked. And if you really loved them then even after the affair’s over you can never go back to the way the world looked before.
Movies are points of view. And if that point of view is particularly novel or beautiful or funny, then for sure I’m going to carry it with me long after the movie’s over.
Case in point: 1942’s To Be or Not to Be
This one really sneaks up on you. The movie sets itself up to be a pretty standard backstage 40s romp right up until the Nazis blow up the theater. After that, things get funnier and more complicated.
While Mel Brooks knew what he was doing when heremade the movie in 1983, To Be or Not to Be loses a lot of its bite when removed from its context: a move about World War II made during the war and directed by a German ex-patriot.
We met Ernst Lubitsch ten years back with 1932’s Trouble In Paradise, where he showed off his unequaled prowess with sexy subtext and witty banter. To Be or Not to Be, while it’s got sexy subtext and witty banter, plays an entirely different game: it uses entertainment to fight the Third Reich. The twists and turns allow for the skills of a Warsaw theater troupe to manipulate Hitler himself.
Long before Roberto Beningi’s 1997 movie, Life is Beautiful, proved that concentration camps can be funny, Lubitsch showed that it’s possible to craft a warm, funny, satirical movie about theater people going toe to toe with Nazis. Ever since watching To Be or Not to Be, it has been impossible for me to allow that one can’t turn the tragic into the comic. Put it another way, if a German can make fun of Nazis in the midst of World War II, then for sure anything can be made funny at any point in time. Political commentary doesn’t need to be preachy, smart movies don’t need to be ponderous, and art can most certainly entertain.
I know this because To Be or Not to Be changed my point of view. It changed my life.
Next week: It’s musical time. But don’t worry, we’ll talk about drugs, dames, and booze.
