Watch on the Rhine: Difference between revisions

| based onbased_on = {{based on|''[[Watch on the Rhine (play)|Watch on the Rhine]]''<br>1941 play|[[Lillian Hellman]]}}

| music = {{ubl|[[Max Steiner]]|[[Hugo Friedhofer]]}}

| distributorstudio = [[Warner Bros.]]

| budget = $1,099,000<ref name="warners">Warner Bros financial information in The William ShaeferSchaefer Ledger. See Appendix 1, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, (1995) 15:sup1, 1-31 p 24 DOI: 10.1080/01439689508604551</ref>

'''''Watch on the Rhine''''' is a 1943 American [[drama (film and television)|drama film]] directed by [[Herman Shumlin]] and starring [[Bette Davis]] and [[Paul Lukas]]. The screenplay by [[Dashiell Hammett]] is based on the 1941 play ''[[Watch on the Rhine (play)|Watch on the Rhine]]'' by [[Lillian Hellman]]. ''Watch on the Rhine'' was nominated for the [[Academy Award for Best Picture]] and Paul Lukas won the [[Academy Award for Best Actor]] for his performance as Kurt Muller, a German-born anti-fascist in this film.<ref name="Oscars16">{{cite news|url=http://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1944|title=The 16th Academy Awards (1944) Nominees and Winners|access-date=August 27, 2013|publisher=Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160321095215/http://oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1944|archive-date=March 21, 2016}}</ref>

In 1940, German-born engineer Kurt Muller, his American wife Sara, and their children Joshua, Babette, and Bodo cross the [[Mexico–United States border|Mexican border]] into the United States to visit Sara's brother David Farrelly and their mother Fanny in [[Washington, D.C.]] For the past 17 years, the Muller family has lived in Europe, where Kurt responded to the rise of [[Nazism]] by engaging in [[Anti-fascism|anti-Fascistfascist]] activities. Sara tells her family they are seeking peaceful sanctuary on American soil, but their quest is threatened by the presence of house guest Teck de Brancovis, an opportunistic [[Romanians|Romanian]] count who has been conspiring with the Germans[[Embassy of Germany, Washington, D.C.|German Embassy]]. Teck, married to athe younger Marthe , tries to force her to learn more about the Mullers. She and David are attracted to each other and she finds her husband's politics horrendous.

* [[Bette Davis]] as Sara Muller-Farrelly

* [[Janis Wilson]] as Babette Muller

* Eric[[Hal RobertsWeilandgruber]] as Bodo Muller

The Lillian Hellman play had enjoyed a respectable run of 378 performances on Broadway.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=1091| title=Watch on the Rhine| publisher=Internet Broadway Database| accessdateaccess-date=2015-08-09}}</ref> Feeling its focus on patriotism would make it an ideal and prestigious propaganda film at the height of World War II,<ref>{{cite book| title=Hal Wallis, Producer to the Stars| firstfirst1=Bernard F.| lastlast1=Dick| page=76| publisher=University of Kentucky Press| date=May 21, 2004| isbn=978-0813123172}}</ref> [[Jack L. Warner]] paid $150,000 for the screen rights in 1941.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=AFI{{!}}Catalog|url=https://catalog.afi.com/Film/747-WATCH-ONTHERHINE?sid=8aedbb31-41ac-4cd3-979b-c8bcdd0b6f16&sr=3.3502524&cp=1&pos=7|access-date=2022-02-21|website=catalog.afi.com}}</ref><ref name=TCM>{{cite web| url=httphttps://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=/1627&category=Notes/watch-on-the-rhine#notes| title=Watch on the Rhine (1943)| publisher=[[Turner Classic Movies]]| accessdateaccess-date=20152023-0812-0914}}</ref><ref name=Stine>{{cite book| last1=Stine| first1=Whitney| last2=Davis| first2=Bette| title=Mother Goddam: The Story of the Career of Bette Davis| location=New York| publisher=Hawthorn Books| date=May 1, 1974| isbn=978-0801551840| pages=[https://archive.org/details/mothergoddam00whit/page/170 170–172]| url-access=registration| url=https://archive.org/details/mothergoddam00whit/page/170}}</ref><ref name=Higham>{{cite book| lastlast1=Higham| firstfirst1=Charles| title=Bette: The Life of Bette Davis| location=New York| publisher=Macmillan Publishing Company| date=October 1, 1981| isbn=978-0025515000| pages=[https://archive.org/details/bettelifeofbette00high/page/164 164–166]| url=https://archive.org/details/bettelifeofbette00high/page/164}}</ref><ref>"Film Rights $ Up and Up; Hollywood Gets Taken But Presitige Pix Pay." Billboard 55:49 (4 December 1943), 4.</ref> The play's producer [[Herman Shumlin]] was hired as director, while many of the actors from the play reprised their role in the film.

[[Paul Henreid]] later said Jack Warner offered him the lead but turned it down because he did not want to be typecast, and felt that it was based on a "contrived play, in no way up to [[Elmer Rice]]'s ''Flight to the West''. My original contract stipulated that I always get the girl and I used that as an excuse to get out of the movie."<ref>{{cite book|title=Ladies man : an autobiography|url=https://archive.org/details/ladiesmanautobio00henr|url-access=registration|last1=Henreid|first1= Paul|last2= Fast|first2= Julius|year=1984 |publisher=St. Martin's Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/ladiesmanautobio00henr/page/166 166] |isbn=9780312463847}}</ref>

The [[Production Code Administration]] was concerned that Kurt Muller escaped prosecution for his murder of Teck de Brancovis, and the [[Motion Picture Production Code|Hays Office]] suggested it be established Kurt was killed by the Nazis at the end of the film in order to show he paid for his crime. Hellman objected,<ref>{{cite web|title=Watch on the Rhine (1943) - Herman Shumlin - film review|url=http://www.filmsdefrance.com/review/watch-on-the-rhine-1943.html|accessdateaccess-date=27 January 2017}}</ref> the studio agreed Kurt had been justified in shooting Teck, and the scene remained.<ref name="TCM" /> In his afterword to the April 25, 2020 airing of ''Watch on the Rhine'' on [[Turner Classic Movies|TCM]], [http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/1386700%7C0/Dave-Karger-TCM-Host.html Dave Karger] describes this controversy in more detail. According to Karger's script, [[Joseph Breen|Joe Breen]] demanded a new scene in which Muller suffered the consequences of his actions, but Lukas did not show up for the filming. The censor insisted that Muller could not be allowed to get away with murder, even of a Nazi, so the last scene of the film, between Sara and her son, Joshua, was added. Many months have passed without word from Muller, strongly suggesting that he has been captured and/or killed.

Several exterior scenes shot on location in Washington were cut from the film before its release due to wartime restrictions on the filming of government buildings. Other locations included the [[Warner Bros. Ranch]] in [[Burbank, California|Burbank]], [[Busch Gardens]] in [[Pasadena, California|Pasadena]], [[Union Station (Los Angeles)|Los Angeles Union Station]], and the Graves Mansion in [[San Marino, California]].<ref name=":0" />

[[Bosley Crowther]] of ''The New York Times'' called ''Watch on the Rhine'' "a distinguished film — a film full of sense, power and beauty" and added, "Its sense resides firmly in its facing one of civilization's most tragic ironies, its power derives from the sureness with which it tells a mordant tale and its beauty lies in its disclosures of human courage and dignity. It is meager praise to call it one of the fine adult films of these times." He continued, "Miss Hellman's play tends to be somewhat static in its early stretches on the screen. With much of the action confined to one room in the American home, development depends largely on dialogue — which is dangerous in films. But the prose of Miss Hellman is so lucid, her characters so surely conceived and Mr. Shumlin has directed for such fine tension in this his first effort for the screen that movement is not essential. The characters propel themselves." In conclusion, he said, "An ending has been given the picture which advances the story a few months and shows the wife preparing to let her older son follow his father back to Europe. This is dramatically superfluous, but the spirit is good in these times. And it adds just that much more heroism to a fine, sincere, outspoken film."<ref>{{cite news| url=http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B07E2D71139E33BBC4051DFBE668388659EDE| title=Movie Review: Watch on the Rhine| work=The New York Times| lastlast1=Crowther| firstfirst1=Bosley| date=August 28, 1943}}</ref>

''Variety'' called it "a distinguished picture...even better than its powerful original stage version. It expresses the same urgent theme, but with broader sweep and in more affecting terms of personal emotion. The film more than retains the vital theme of the original play. It actually carries the theme further and deeper, and it does so with passionate conviction and enormous skill...Just as he was in the play, Paul Lukas is the outstanding star of the film. Anything his part may have lost in the transfer of key lines to Bette Davis is offset by the projective value of the camera for closeups. His portrayal of the heroic German has the same quiet strength and the slowly gathering force that it had on the stage, but it now seems even better defined and carefully detailed, and it has much more vitality. In the lesser starring part of the wife Davis gives a performance of genuine distinction."<ref>{{cite news| url= https://www.variety.com/review1942/VE1117796216.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&p=0film/reviews/watch-on-the-rhine-1200413959| title=Review: 'Watch on the Rhine'| date=December 31, 1942| work=Variety| accessdateaccess-date=20152023-0812-0914}}</ref>

Davis stated in a 1971 interview with [[Dick Cavett]] that she played the role of the wife for 'name value' because the studio did not consider the film a good financial risk and that her name above the credits would draw audiences. Davis gladly took the secondary role because she felt the story was so important, and that Miss Hellman's writing was "super brilliant".<ref>{{cite web| title=The Dick Cavett Show: Season 6, Episode 40: Bette Davis| url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0875850/| airdatedate=November 18, 1971| publisher=[[IMDb|Internet Movie Data BaseDatabase]]}}</ref>

[[Paul Lukas]] won the [[Academy Award for Best Actor]], the [[Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama]] (the first time the award was presented), and the [[New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor]].

[[Lucile Watson]] was nominated for the [[Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress]] but lost to [[Katina Paxinou]] in ''[[For Whom the Bell Tolls (film)|For Whom the Bell Tolls]].'' Dashiell Hammett was nominated for the [[Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay|Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)]] but lost to the trio of [[Philip G. Epstein]], [[Julius J. Epstein]], and [[Howard E. Koch|Howard Koch]], who won for the work in ''[[Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]''.

==DVDHome releasemedia==

[[Category:American1940s spy drama films]]

[[Category:American spy drama films]]