To Be or Not to Be (1983 film)
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| To Be or Not to Be | |
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| Directed by | Alan Johnson |
| Produced by | Mel Brooks |
| Written by | Ronny Graham Melchior Lengyel (story) Ernst Lubitsch (story) Edwin Justus Mayer (1942 screenplay) Thomas Meehan |
| Starring | Mel Brooks Anne Bancroft Charles Durning |
| Music by | John Morris |
| Cinematography | Gerald Hirschfeld |
| Editing by | Alan Balsam |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | 16 December 1983 |
| Running time | 107 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
To Be or Not to Be is a 1983 20th Century Fox comedy film directed by Alan Johnson, produced by Mel Brooks with Howard Jeffrey as executive producer and Irene Walzer as associate producer. The screenplay was written by Ronny Graham and Thomas Meehan, based on the original story by Melchior Lengyel, Ernst Lubitsch and Edwin Justus Mayer. It is a remake of the 1942 film of the same title.
The film starred Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft with Tim Matheson, Charles Durning, Christopher Lloyd and José Ferrer.
This remake was one of the first major American films to acknowledge that homosexuals were persecuted by the Third Reich, along with other Holocaust victims. This version was extremely faithful to the 1942 version, and in many cases dialogue was taken verbatim from the earlier film.
[edit] Notes
- A gag starts off the Mel Brooks version with Brooks and Bancroft performing the song "Sweet Georgia Brown" in Polish, and after the performance the two have a quarrel backstage (still in Polish) until an announcer calls out: "Ladies and gentlemen, for the interest of clarity and sanity the rest of this movie will not be in Polish."
- Whenever the beleaguered German commanding officer, Colonel Erhardt, falls for the numerous tricks played on him, he roars for his assistant, "Schulz!". For his humorous performance of Erhardt, Charles Durning was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award.
- On the movie's soundtrack album, but not in the movie, is a novelty rap song entitled, "To Be or Not to Be (The Hitler Rap)."
