Ernst Lubitsch
Vogliamo Vivere!

September 1939: in Europe, the Austrian Adolf Hitler, Führer of Germany, decides to invade Poland and start World War II.

United States 1942: the German director Ernst Lubitsch decides to bombard the Führer from across the ocean with the only weapons at his disposal, weapons that Hitler, despite having plenty of scientists and researchers, will NEVER possess: intelligence and irony.

The story unfolds between Warsaw and London just before and during the conflict, where a theater company stages Hamlet and simultaneously prepares the satirical drama Gestapo. A drama that never gains traction due to the Nazi invasion and the consequent adhesion of the company to the resistance groups of the Polish capital. This band of quirky actors must use all their artistic and inventive abilities to escape and deceive the foolish yet highly organized oppressors.

The protagonists of the film are also the two main actors of the ragtag company, Jozef Tura (a fantastic and irresistibly comedic Jack Benny) and his wife Maria (the enchanting Carole Lombard, who died in a plane crash during filming and is always surrounded by a magical aura in the film).

The plot is rather intricate to explain, and I don't think I would be doing the reader any favors by narrating it, as it is full of twists and turns, masterfully intertwined, perfectly executed without any loss of pace. It's rich like no other work in witty and intelligent dialogue, in paradoxical situations and unforgettable characters (the actor who dreams of performing the Rialto scene, the one who "does Hitler like no one else," the one who always overacts, the most entertainingly jealous husband in film history), in moments that are the joy of laughing at the most absurd pranks.

I write this review because when I see works like these, I regain faith in humanity; I realize that sometimes we are capable of the most intensely and passionately intelligent actions, and even more beautifully... we are capable of them in the darkest and most difficult moments of our histories.

Lubitsch spits on what his homeland was producing at that historical moment, challenges and humiliates Hitler, the Gestapo, the Nazis, the fascists, the terrorists; he exposes stupidity in the form of political parties or social ideologies, elevates comic art (and art in general) to the status of the most lethal weapon of defense possessed by the weak, the minorities, the underdogs.

Lubitsch tells us, as well as millions of those killed by governments and institutions, what Chaplin says in The Great Dictator or Benigni in Life is Beautiful (the scene of Roberto's killing in the alley is a tribute to the film in question): "a laugh will bury you."

Well Ernst... I agree.