"So they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt?". There's taste, and there's this fabulously funny and original wartime comedy from director Ernst Lubitsch, which transcends taste. Witty and cleverly satirical by turns, this movie avoids giving offence by its magnificent casting, with Jack Benny as "that great, great actor Joseph Tura" and the wonderful comedian Carole Lombard, in her final film, released after her untimely death in a plane crash. Don't miss the opening, a hysterical gag concerning Hitler (I warned you about taste). There's poignancy, too, and a terrific running joke involving Lombard's admirer, played by the young Robert Stack. Mel Brooks audaciously remade this story and achieved almost as many laughs, but the immutable style of this classic original proved impossible to re-create.

During the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.