The Role Of The Holocaust In Hollywood Film

Hollywood films have acted as teaching tools over the years that have compelled society to reflect and think about certain events in history and perhaps current affairs in the world, as the Director Anker stated, "it's easy to be cynical that so much of the world learns their history through Hollywood, but it's a fact of life."1 The Holocaust, however, was such a controversial, incomprehensible and dark moment in history that filmmakers in Hollywood struggled to convey the true nature of the atrocities on the silver screen as, "Filmmakers and film critics confronting the Holocaust face a basic task- finding an appropriate language for that which is mute or defies visualization... the development of a suitable cinematic language for a unique

The film was controversial due to its use of some of the boldest forms of black humour for an American film on such a current desolate topic in 1942. Film historian Theodore Huff wrote in his book 'Index to the Films of Ernst Lubitsch', "the Lubitsch burlesque, laid in Nazi-invaded Warsaw, was called callous, a picture of confusing moods, lacking in taste, its subject not suitable for fun making. While others felt that such merciless satire and subtle humour were good anti-Nazi propaganda, the picture was, perhaps, ill-timed.10" The film created such an upheaval in the press, Lubitsch himself felt compelled to comment on how he viewed the film, "When in 'To Be or Not to Be' I have referred to the destruction of Warsaw, I have shown it in all seriousness; the commentation under the shots of the devastated Warsaw speaks for itself and cannot leave any doubt in the spectator’s mind what my point of view and attitude are toward those acts of horror. What I have satirised in this picture are the Nazis and their ridiculous ideology.11" Compared to Chaplin's political satire film 'The Great Dictator' (1940), Lubitsch's film was taken in a completely different light most likely due to the timing of its release- Mid-World