This was another high-profile Oscar-winner (for Paul Lukas as Best Actor) which had eluded me thus far; the film is a topical, i.e. wartime, Warner Bros. drama which served as both a prestige production and a vehicle for their No. 1 female star – Bette Davis. Still, the actress is content here to play second-fiddle to Lukas – much as had been the case with the classic comedy THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (1941), co-starring Monty Woolley. Perhaps not coincidentally, both were inspired by plays and, consequently, proved verbose and stylistically limited; indeed, the only other film helmed by Broadway director Schumlin was the loose Graham Greene adaptation CONFIDENTIAL AGENT (1945), as it happened, another espionage thriller.
Anyway, WATCH ON THE RHINE (scripted by popular crime novelist Dashiell Hammett – whose THE MALTESE FALCON had been thrice filmed by the studio in the space of a decade! – from the original by his partner Lillian Hellman) also bore a striking resemblance to another recent Warner Bros. effort, CASABLANCA; previewed in December 1942 but opening for general release the following year, it ended up competing with the film under review in some of the top Oscar categories (including Best Picture, Actor and Adapted Screenplay). It is telling, however, that for a movie that underwent major changes during production, CASABLANCA holds together much more firmly than the stolid WATCH ON THE RHINE and, needless to say, also caught the public fancy to a much greater extent – remaining one of the most fondly-remembered Hollywood classics to this day!
The comparisons between the two films involve the chase by Nazis for an underground leader: here, it is anti-Fascist German Lukas (quite fine under the circumstances, if frail-looking for the requirements of the role and evidently struggling with the rich dialogue – invariably delivered in a Hungarian accent he never managed to shake off, like his compatriot Bela Lugosi!) who has come to Washington to stay with the family of wife Davis (who seems perennially on the verge of tears here!); also living there are a rather wasted Geraldine Fitzgerald and her ill-suited and impoverished Romanian aristocrat partner George Coulouris, sympathetic to the Third Reich (represented by Henry Daniell and Kurt Katch) despite having fallen out of favour with them. Indeed, when he suspects Lukas' true identity, he realizes it is a chance for him to once again enter into the Party's good books! Davis' relatives (outspoken society mother Lucile Watson – the other Oscar nominee here – and debonair brother Donald Woods, who carries a flame for Fitzgerald) at first are confused by the intrigue but, when it comes to choose sides, they obviously pick up the cause of the Resistance. While the confrontation scenes between Lukas and Coulouris easily emerge as the film's trump card, the speechifying does make for heavy-going viewing (with the schtick relating to the Lukases' indoctrinated yet wide-eyed children tilting proceeding dangerously towards outright boredom!).
