Watch on the Rhine (1943)

Watch on the Rhine, a Best Picture of 1943 nominee, is a World War II era movie that takes place almost entirely in the area surrounding Washington, D.C. However, it's not about government officials or military leaders trying to determine how best the United States should involve itself in the fight against Nazism and fascism. Instead, it's a film about one family's struggles to make what it considers to be the right choices.

Paul Lukas, who would win the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance here, plays Kurt Muller, a German refugee who is married to an American woman, Sara, played by Bette Davis. At the beginning of the film, they and their three children, two boys and a girl, cross the border from Mexico into the United States in order to escape to the home of Sarah's mother, Fanny Farrelly (the delightful Lucile Watson), the widow of a former Supreme Court Justice--it's a fact she keeps pointing out throughout the film; you can't accuse Fanny of subtlety. In addition to her son David, Fanny is also host to the Count and Countess de Brancovis (George Coulouris and Geraldine Fitzgerald), a Romanian couple. The Count, also known as Teck, has maintained ties with the German embassy; well, his ties include regular poker games and gossip with various hangers-on at the embassy.

Fanny, delighted to have all of the members of her family in the same house, tries to arrange for an engineering job for her son-in-law. Unfortunately, she soon learns that he hasn't really been working as an engineer for quite some time. He describes himself instead as being an "anti-fascist" whenever someone asks him. The Mullers left Germany in the 1930s and have been to most of the places in Europe where the Nazis and others have attempted to take control. Herr Muller tells how he saw men murdered in the streets of his hometown during a holiday festival, and that's what apparently determined the future direction of his life. Davis' Sara has been completely supportive of his choices, and the family has made many sacrifices over the years to support the father's efforts.

The Count, after initially suspecting that Muller might have been an advance man for the Nazis, comes to realize that he is either the leader of an anti-Nazi underground group or one of its most active members. He discovers money and a gun among the contents of a locked briefcase in a drawer in the Mullers' room, and he confronts Kurt after Sara discovers that the lock has been broken. The showdown between Kurt and Teck is very tense, and it's probably what won Lukas the Oscar. Of course, he won over Humphrey Bogart's legendary performance as Rick in Casablanca, so I'm not sure Lukas truly deserved the honor that year.

What intrigues me most about this film is that it is set in April 1940, years before U.S. involvement in World War II. Fanny and her son David seem to be naive about world events, perhaps choosing only to pay attention to those changes in Europe that they seem to favor and ignoring any evidence that the fascists have infiltrated many countries. They do not, for example, realize how much of an opportunist the Count is until it is too late. Sara confronts her mother's lack of knowledge by saying, "The world has changed." It's a pretty stinging indictment, and I suspect it was meant as much for the United States people as it was for the older woman in the movie.

Lukas gets a couple of good moments, particularly when he explains to his children why he has taken some of the actions he has over the years, such as killing another man. Davis is very different here from those movies in which she was the star. She's top-billed here, but this is really more of a supporting role for her, but she handles the part admirably. Watson is a standout as Fanny, and she was deservedly nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. I also enjoyed the performances of the three children, but the one who stands out, of course, is Eric Roberts as Bodo. No, it's not that Eric Roberts. Just how old do you think he really is? This Eric Roberts gives a fine performance as the know-it-all youngest child, a boy who's read a great deal of philosophy and history and seems to know all of the answers.

Watch on the Rhine is based upon a Lillian Hellman play that appeared on Broadway a few months before the attacks on Pearl Harbor led to the formal involvement of the United States in World War II. Maybe Hellman was trying to warn Americans of what was ahead for them. Her long-time lover, Dashiell Hammett, adapted the play into the screen version, keeping intact most of the warnings voiced by Sara and Kurt Muller. It would have been a very timely choice for the Academy to nominate this film in 1943 and to give an acting award to Lukas, at least in part, as a gesture of support for all of the anti-Fascists in Europe at the time.