Comedy, Suspense, and Three-Point Lighting in TO BE OR NOT TO BE

In his audacious political satire TO BE OR NOT TO BE, Ernst Lubitsch pulls off the seemingly impossible by using a deadly serious, then-unfolding crisis—the Nazi occupation of Poland—as the backdrop for a hilarious and subversive screwball comedy. In this episode of Observations on Film Art, Professor Kristin Thompson explores how Lubitsch and cinematographer Rudolph Maté make sophisticated use of lighting to mark the film’s daring shifts in in tone and genre, from farce to espionage thriller to dark drama.