Watch on the Rhine **** (1943, Bette Davis, Paul Lukas, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Lucile Watson, George Coulouris, Beulah Bondi, Henry Daniell) – Classic Movie Review 2,740

The strong, tense 1943 wartime patriotic thriller film Watch on the Rhine stars Paul Lukas, who won a deserved Best Actor Oscar as a German underground patriot harassed by Hitler’s men in Washington DC. Bette Davis plays his wife. 

Director Herman Shumlin’s strong and tense 1943 wartime patriotic thriller stars the hardly remembered Paul Lukas (1891–1971), who won a deserved Best Actor Oscar for his role as Kurt Muller, a German underground patriot harassed by Adolf Hitler’s men in Washington DC.

There were three other 1944 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Lucile Watson) and Best Screenplay. Lukas won the 1944 Golden Globe for Best Film Actor, and triumphed too at the 1943 New York Film Critics Awards, where the movie also won Best Film.

Warner Bros’ distinguished and involving film of Lillian Hellman’s play is brought to the screen in a screenplay by her long-time companion and lover Dashiell Hammett, who relishes and luxuriates in the script’s outpouring of clever and dignified words. Hellman is credited for additional scenes and dialogue.

But neither Shumlin, nor Hellman nor Hammett are much concerned about the culture of film – they are just not movie people – so something more cinematic might have been more powerful and less static and stagey. Nevertheless, the story, characters and message still shine through brightly.

However, it is the distinguished acting that does the trick and proves the most important thing. Lukas’s greatly admired performance, re-creating his stage role, is backed by expert performances from Bette Davis, playing his wife, George Coulouris as the blackmailer Teck de Brancovis and Oscar-nominated Lucile Watson as Fanny Farrelly, a naive sitter-on-the-fence in the war against the Nazis.

Davis and Lukas play Sara and Kurt Muller who return to her mother’s home in Washington DC with their three children after 18 years in Europe. Coulouris has the key role of Teck de Brancovis, a Romanian count in Washington, who discovers Kurt’s attaché case full of money and finds out from German Embassy friends that Kurt is working with an anti-Nazi underground group in Germany. Teck proceeds to blackmail Kurt. 

As both the film and subsequent stage revivals show, this is still a fine, classic play. Most of the cast (except Davis and a few Warner stock players) came from the hit Broadway version, also directed by Shumlin.

Also in the star cast are Donald Woods as David Farrelly, Geraldine Fitzgerald as Marthe de Brancovis, Beulah Bondi as Anise, Henry Daniell as Phili Von Ramme, and Eric Roberts (the child actor, in his debut).

Also in the support cast are Donald Buka, Anthony Caruso, Helmut Dantine, Clyde Fillmore, Howard C Hickman, Creighton Hale, Janis Wilson, Mary Young, Kurt Katch, Erwin Kalser, Robert O Davis, Frank L Wilson, Clarence Muse, Violet McDowell, Joe Bernard, Jack Mower, William Washington, Elvira Curci, Michele Fehr, Jean De Briac, Frank Reicher, Robert O Fischer, Walter Stahl, Glen Cavender, Joe deVillard, Wedgwood Nowell, Hans Tanzler, Herman Cordova, Gretl Dupont, Alan Hale Jr, Garry Owen, Hans Von Morhart.

The ever-battling Davis repeatedly clashed with director Shumlin, a novice film director with no experience on a movie set.  She also didn’t get on with staunch Republican Lucile Watson, who plays her mother in the film. Top-billed Davis took a supporting role as a fan of Hellman’s work, having recently worked on the 1941 film version of her play The Little Foxes.

Watch on the Rhine premiered at the Martin Beck Theater in New York City on 1 April 1941 and closed on 21 February 1942 after 378 performances. Paul Lukas as Kurt Muller, Lucile Watson as Fanny Farrelly, George Coulouris as Teck de Brancovis, Eric Roberts as Bodo Muller and Frank L Wilson as Joseph all originated their movie roles in the play.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,740

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