Watch on the Rhine
Directed by Herman Shumlin
Written by Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman from the play by Hellman
1943/USA
Warner Bros
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Kurt Muller: I do not tell you this story to prove that we are remarkable but to prove that they are not.[/box]
Oscar-winner Paul Lukas is well worth seeing in this tale of German resistance to facism in the years before America entered the war.
Kurt Muller (Lucas) has been a Nazi-fighter since Hitler came to power. He lives in constant danger so takes his wife Sara (Bette Davis) and three children from Mexico back to her family home near Washington. Sara’s father was a Supreme Court justice and the house is extremely comfortable compared to what the family has been used to. Sara’s feisty mother (Lucile Watson) is delighted to see her daughter and meet her grandchildren.
Also staying as houseguests are the Romanian Count de Brancovis (George Colouris) and his much younger wife Marthe (Geraldine Fitzgerald). The count is a frequent guest at the German Embassy and desperate to get the money and a visa to return to Europe. He starts spying on Kurt looking for something to sell. With Beulah Bondi as a French friend of the family.
This is well written anti-facsist propaganda by Lillian Hellman, a noted radical. There are several political speeches but also a number of really touching scenes. The speeches tend to be put into the mouth of Bette Davis (in a rare supporting role) while Lukas is more the practical fighter. He probably won his award for some very moving work near the end of the film. I thought Lucile Watson was pretty great as a humorous old liberal. She lights up the screen whenever she is on it.
Paul Lukas won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Watch on the Rhine. The film was also nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Supporting Actress Watson); and Best Writing, Screenplay.
Trailer
Before I ever saw this I had always figured it was a war movie about an attack coming up the Rhine river. I was surprised when I saw it was set in the U.S., and while it was about the Nazis trying to infiltrate it wasn’t an out and out war film.
One problem with watching films chronologically like I am is that I am getting all my propaganda and combat films in one big lump during the war years. I prefer the propaganda to the combat and this is better than some. Still a shame that Lukas won out over Bogart.
You can bet if a film has George Colouris, he is going to be a bad guy!!!
I thought that Davis and Lukas were an oddly matched couple ….he seemed too old for her but he always looked middled-aged in his films. It was propaganda as were most films made during the war but I thought it was handled well…….in some war-time films, it gets a little heavy handed. I liked it but it is a one time viewing for me since I thought it was good but not particularly outstanding.
The part I liked the most was when Lukas talked about the killing at the end. It seemed real to me. Otherwise, it seemed like there wasn’t enough story. We had the whole romance between David and Marthe (Fitzgerald) that was made a point of and then they kind of dropped it.
I love Lucile Watson and agree she is always a treat. A bright spot in any movie!
I was drawn to watch this film because of Lucile Watson. She was the only real charachter in the movie. The others were propaganda mouth-pieces. As honorable as an anti-Nazi position is I thought the whole film was artificial and heavy handed. Yes, the speeches were wonderful, the oratory fantastic but they were speeches belonging on a political platform not in a living room.
People don’t talk like that normally. Maybe one eloquent outburst but not speech after noble speech. Too much, too heavy handed.
The disollution of Marthe and David’s marriage via Marthe’s rant against him comes out of nowhere. Why did she marry him, if she always hated him, as she states? Ridiculous. Ridiculous that in a house with all this turmoil going on, shootings, furniture falling etc., she apparently is sitting quietly in her bedroom. You’d think she’d come downstairs to commiserate with the rest of the family, i.e. lick her wounds. After all it’s a great move she’s just made splitting with her husband of, what 15 years?
The honours this film received were purely out of patriotic reasons and a touch of guilt: the U.S. having entered into the battle against Facism late in the game – after Europeans had suffered a lot.
The film felt contrived and artificial, a venue for political speeches, not a story about real people going through the agonies of war.
I agree Humphrey Bogart should have won. He played a real person.
I also dislike speeches in movies. One of the reasons I can’t stand Chaplin after he started talking. Thanks for the comment!