Event Details
A Shakespearean actor reluctantly joins a Resistance plot against the Nazis in 1939 Warsaw in this daring comedy directed by two-time Oscar nominee Ernst Lubitsch (Heaven Can Wait, 1943). Comedy legend Jack Benny had his greatest screen role as the pompous ham Joseph Tura, and Oscar nominee Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey, 1936) was his expert match as his actress wife, Maria, her final film role before her death weeks before the film’s release. Finding the perfect balance between wartime tension and hilarious farce, Lubitsch’s classic— filmed right as the U.S. entered World War II— was remade in 1983, with Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft as the couple.
Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.
1942 | 100 min. | USA | Black-and-White | English | DCP
DIRECTED BY: Ernst Lubitsch
WRITTEN BY: Edwin Justus Mayer
STORY BY: Melchior Lengyel
WITH: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart