For each man, his own hands - Watch on the Rhine - 1943

Watch on the Rhine (1943) is a tale of resistance against fascism and the price of commitment.  In its drawing-room intrigue on the showdown between Nazis, enablers of fascism, those who resist, and those who are completely naïve about the evil forces around them, it focuses on the motivations, regrets, and fears of a single resistance fighter.  Paul Lukas, who won the Academy Award for his sensitive portrayal, is asked by Lucille Watson, his American mother-in-law, who gives his family refuge, about why he must always sacrifice for the cause against fascism?  Why not leave the job to somebody else?

“But why must it always be your hands?”

He answers, “For each man, his own hands.  He has to sleep with them.”

A day of reckoning comes to each person, for different reasons, and at different times.  What we see today in American society commonly, and not so furtively called The Resistance is also a fight against fascism, but it is taking the form of a social movement, with brave public protests, and sometimes with casualties, but for everyone there is a price to pay.  Watch on the Rhine has always been one of my favorite movies, and one of the aspects of the movie which I find so fascinating is the treatment of the Paul Lukas character.  He is both a hero, and a fanatic, and yet he is a most mild-mannered gentleman, loving and kindly to his wife and children, rather beaten and weary in middle-age, and by his own admission, fearful.  He is an unlikely hero, and his very gentleness and empathy, his being haunted over his resistance activities and what harm they do to his family makes him a very compelling character. But he has a backbone of steel and snaps into action like someone who never questions his own motives.

We have discussed Watch on the Rhine in previous posts: in this one centered on George Coulouris’ villain who is the greatest threat to Paul Lukas, and in this post on American idealism.

Ann Blyth performed with the original Broadway cast (not in the film), with Paul Lukas, George Coulouris, Lucille Watson, Frank L. Wilson, and Eric Roberts.  In my book on Ann’s career, Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star., I go into more detail on the stage play and its impact on American theatre – it was a tremendous hit.  The eloquent script was by Lillian Hellman, and its director, Herman Shumlin, also directed the 1943 film.

We meet the resistance fighter in the very first moments of the movie. He does not look anything like a fighter of Nazis. He is a timid, shuffling family man, shepherding his wife and three children to the United States border with Mexico. They are coming to the United States as refugees from a war-torn Europe. They are nervous about going through customs. We see among the stack of passports stamped by the official that four are identical, and the top one is different from the others. That one is a United States passport because his wife, played by Bette Davis, is an American citizen. The first thing he says when they step over the line into the United States, “And now you are in your own land, Sara, and that is good.” 

Just as the hero of the story does not look like a hero, the bad guys do not look like typical Hollywood Nazis. George Coulouris is a dapper Romanian ex-diplomat. We see him mostly in evening dress, and he is charming, well educated and well spoken. This movie shows us that the real evil are not the Nazis in uniforms, but the parasites among them who use those who are more powerful to get money, favoritism, and some of that power for themselves. Eventually, we get to see the local Nazi ringleader played by Kurt Katch, but he is not a smartly dressed in a commandant’s uniform. He is sloppily dressed in an old sweater playing poker. So far nobody looks as they should.

But he is really quite sinister because he is soulless and crafty. He sits in an office in the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. The Nazis are in the American homeland, close to the center of government. They are close to the bankers, the industrialists who support the regime. This Nazi shuffling cards is far more dangerous to our government than Panzer units.

We then see, in comparison, that George Coulouris is just a pawn. He is most certainly a danger to Paul Lukas, but he is fighting for his own rank and survival as well in a world of fascism. As we noted in our series of posts last summer (The Mortal Storm (1940),  Address Unknown (1944),  Storm Warning (1951),  Keeper of the Flame (1942), and Seven Days in May (1964)) that fascism is cannibalistic. Fascists always eat their own. We may see the correlation in our own time with the co-dependent, but adversarial relationship between Trump and Bannon, between Trump and Mitch McConnell, between Trump and every conservative Republican who needs him to put forth their agenda, but who will inevitably be stabbed in the back by him and possibly even share his fate if they do not shed their complacency.

The play, and the movie, is an examination of America’s innocence and naïveté not just about evil and our impending doom, i.e., entering the war, but the evil whirlwind that created it.

Complacency is the greatest evil in the movie. One of its representations is in the lovely Geraldine Fitzgerald, who plays George Coulouris’ wife, who hates him on principle but who puts up with him for much too long, until it’s almost too late. They sit in the garden as guests of Lucille Watson, themselves refugees from Europe, and Geraldine says, “I just lie still now and hope... Maybe something good will happen.”

There is the complacency of Lucille Watson and her son played by Donald Woods, who will have put Bette Davis and Paul Lukas in danger simply by having a sneak like George Coulouris in their home and giving him shelter; aid and comfort to the enemy, if you will, but also by not resisting. They have embraced American isolationism. They have not taken the moral step of resisting evil.

Paul Lukas resists evil at every turn, because he is practical and knows that fascism will devour his children and others if he does not fight it, and also because he is an idealist who believes that the world can be better. It is the fascinating picture of a sane fanatic, though he does worry, “Maybe now I am sick, too.”  He has risked all to fight the Nazis, given up his engineering career, put his family in danger numerous times, they must always be on the run, and are often hungry. Is this the picture of a responsible husband and father, a protector and provider? He struggles with this dilemma.

There is, despite its sober message, a great deal of humor in this movie, and inspiration. But it is the discussion of one’s personal commitment to ideals that is most interesting to me. There is much food for thought in this movie.

The play and the screenplay are very neatly and intricately constructed. The cast are all splendid. The arrangement of the characters on screen to show their power struggles, their weaknesses in relationship to each other is excellent work by Director Shumlin, and it is quite interesting to see that though this is his first motion picture, he was as adept at understanding the perspective of the camera as he apparently was the power of stage blocking.

We can also incidentally note that Lucille Watson was a conservative Republican and Bette Davis was a liberal Democrat, but they could both contribute their talent to this noble Hollywood film that challenges American ideals and American commitment.

When Paul Lukas remarks to Lucille Watson that each man must decide for himself the level of his own commitment, “for each man his own hands. He has to sleep with them,” Donald woods replies, “I guess that’s how we should all feel. But you have a family. Isn’t there someone else who hasn’t a wife and children?”

Lukas replies, “Each could find his own excuse. Some have bullet holes. Some have fear of the camps, and many are getting old. Each could find a reason; many find it. My children are not the only children in the world, even to me.”

There were at least three radio versions of this play and movie of which I am aware. The first, which contains only scenes, is part of the 15 minute Treasury Star Parade promoting the selling of war bonds. The host is Fredric March. Paul Lukas and Mady Christians, who played the Bette Davis role on Broadway, play their characters and also have a brief interview with Fredric March. It was done during the road show of Watch on the Rhine in 1942 after it closed on Broadway and just before the motion picture was made.

Another version was made for Screen Guild Theater October  1, 1944 to promote the film. It stars Paul Lukas, Bette Davis, Lucille Watson, George Coulouris, and Donald woods, who all appeared in the movie.

Yet another version was made for Academy Award Theater August 7, 1946 again with Paul Lukas as the only member of either the original Broadway play or the movie to appear in this particular cast.

The play, when it was first produced in 1941 before we entered World War II, was a lightning rod for discussion on our susceptibility to fascism, not just homegrown Ku Klux Klan clowns and German-American Bund rallies, but also brought speculation on our possible insidious adoption of authoritarianism to which Europe seemed so susceptible. Would foreign agents be able to introduce that kind of corruption here, using our own isolationism, our apathy and disinterest for political intrigue against us? The banker, the industrialist, the press, sit like automatons around the poker table and watch the soulless Nazi deal them cards. 

Lucille Watson and Donald Woods play host to a viper in their midst. Geraldine Fitzgerald stays with her husband, knowing he is evil, because standing up to him is too unpleasant. Then Paul Lukas, Bette Davis, and three kids straggle into the room after an exhausting journey of possibly 7,000 miles, thinking they are on a holiday in America, the safest place on earth. It would be difficult to pick out who in this cast of characters is the most gullible of all.  One by one, each in his or her own way, become resistors.  We don’t know the end of that story.

The play, incidentally, was produced again in Washington, D.C., this past February at the Arena Stage with Marsha Mason in the Bette Davis role.  Read the review here by John Stoltenberg.  The first paragraph indicates this story is still relevant:

Whatever this play meant to Broadway audiences when it debuted in 1941, just prior to America’s entry into a war of resistance to fascism abroad, what matters now is what it means to audiences just as America has entered a war of resistance to fascism here at home. Does Lillian Hellman’s principled script—now in a praiseworthy production on the waterfront at Arena Stage—stand the test of time? Does it warrant viewing, in other words, as a Watch on the Potomac?

Judging from audience response on opening night, the answer is yes.

"Watch on the Potomac," indeed.

George Coulouris - Villain in Watch on the Rhine (1943)

George Coulouris is a sublime villain, supremely important to Watch on the Rhine (1943), so charming in his lazy gentlemanliness, so pitiable in his bad luck and bad moves, and so treacherous in his motives.

The character he plays, a blasé Rumanian count, and a refugee from Europe and his own failed enterprises, is one of playwright Lillian Hellman’s most simple, and yet most brilliant creations.  He is not a blustering fascist—in this anti-Nazi drawing room drama that would stand out like tacky décor, and besides, the bold and courageous resistance fighter Paul Lukas plays is too clever to let himself get too near a real storm trooper-type.  Coulouris is dangerous because he is not an instigator, not a brainwashed (or brain dead) Nazi; he is on the second tier of evildoers—an opportunist.  As Lukas (and Lillian Hellman) describes his ilk: “Some of them were, up to a point, fastidious men.  For these we may someday have pity.  They are lost men.  Their spoils are small.  Their day is gone.”

This is my entry in The Great Villain Blogathon hosted by those evil villains at Speakeasy, Shadows & Satin, and Silver Screenings blogs. 

Watch on Rhine began as a tremendously successful Broadway play.  I discuss more about it in my upcoming book on Ann Blyth, who had a minor role in that play as a child.  The play’s producer and director, Herman Shumlin, went to Hollywood to cast the adult roles because throughout the Great Depression that’s where a lot of the best stage-trained actors went.  He didn’t want Hollywood stars, necessarily, he wanted stage veterans.  In February 1941, he came back with three heavy-hitters: Paul Lukas; Lucile Watson, who would play the acerbic matriarch; and George Coulouris.  Interestingly, he wanted Henry Daniell, but Daniell wasn’t free (he appears in the film as Baron Von Ramme).

Before we get to the film, we need to appreciate the overwhelming respect this play received when it was produced in 1941-1942.  I think in the decades that followed the film lost its strength for a modern audience that regards it as sentimental propaganda, a museum piece of a more gullible era.  Sometimes one of our worst sins is our condescension about the past.  Add to this the changes in the script that gave a larger role to Bette Davis—I’m afraid she tends to take too much of the spotlight in her scenery-chewing.  But the original play hit the theatre world like a storm.  The emotion of the day for the Broadway play was genuine.

Here is one review:

I want to tell you that I believe the finest, most deeply moving play that has been written in America in years is at Ford’s Theater this week…I say it because it is each man’s high duty to inform his fellow-men when he finds, or thinks he finds, something very true, very beautiful, very important.

Watch on the Rhine is all these things to me.  And it was obvious when the curtain fell on the opening performance that it had these qualities to many others, too.

There was the testimony of the applause which continued until the desperate theater manager turned on the bright house lights.  There was the testimony of many tear-filled eyes…With humor and with tenderness, with logic and with occasional poetry, Lillian Hellman has written this play.  And Herman Shumlin has produced it not as a theatrical businessman presents plays.  He has staged it, quite obviously, with love and with great reverence…I do not like to use the word ‘great,’ particularly about a play whose theme is so close to the headlines that our viewpoint may unconsciously be distorted.  Only years can tell that.

But certainly it casts a spell which, for a time at least, transforms a theater into a rare and holy place where the heart is touched, elated, ennobled. – Louis Azrael, Baltimore News-Post.

In an unusual move, Warner Bros., in securing the rights to the play, allowed Herman Shumlin to direct (this was his first movie, and he made only one other); and allowed Paul Lukas, George Coulouris, Lucile Watson, as well as Frank Wilson, who played the butler, to come with Shumlin as part of the deal.  Paul Lukas would win an Academy Award for his performance, and Lucile Watson was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

George Coulouris, originally from the U.K., had a Shakespearean background, and then met up with Orson Welles’ troupe and began a long and very distinguished career in film, stage, TV, radio alternating between noble characters and villains.  That he was adept at both says a lot for how he plays his character in Watch on the Rhine.  We understand him, and can even sympathize as we despise him. 

The intelligent script by Hellman gives all the characters a great forum, and this is what makes a great script.  No character is wasted, they are all necessary and everything they say matters.

We meet Coulouris coming down to breakfast on the terrace of Lucile Watson’s palatial family home outside Washington, D.C.  He is married to Geraldine Fitzgerald, and we see their marriage is rocky.  He snipes at her, accuses her of being too fond of Donald Woods, the son of the house.  In a moment, he greets his hostess Lucile Watson with old-world European charm, and we settle in to the intriguing world of a professional houseguest in the home of a rich patron.

Later, he goes to the German Embassy for an evening gala and a late-night card came.  This scene was written by Dashiell Hammett, to whom Hellman handed off the screenplay chore as she was busy with another commitment.  I like Hammett’s additions for the most part, he opens the story up to all of Washington.  However, some of the strength and verve of the stage play is also watered down in the process, which is a shame.  I suppose it’s a tricky line to walk.

Here at the card game, like a player showing his hand of cards, we are shown the various “face cards” in the arena of fascist villains: Blecher, a cold, sneering bully, referred to as a butcher, who runs the game and the show.  He is the head bad guy to whom his agents report.  He is shrewd and ruthless.  Ironically, this ultra Nazi swine is played by Kurt Katch, born an Eastern European Jew and a veteran of the Yiddish theatre.  He comments on the others and introduces them to us: Baron Von Ramme, played by Henry Daniell is “contemptuous of us, but chiefly because we are not gentlemen.  Would be satisfied enough doing the same things or worse under some stupid Hohenzollern.” 

Then there is the money-grubbing publisher of the American Nazi newspaper, and Chandler, the American oil man who wants to sell to the Axis; the mysterious Oberdorff, played silently by Rudolph Anders who seems the most evil simply because we, and Blecher, know nothing about him.  He is a question mark. 

Then Blecher comes to Coulouris, whom he dismisses as a man who sells things “but at the moment you have nothing to sell.”

He will soon, when Paul Lukas and his family show up, and he suspects from the moment he meets Lukas that here is a man the Nazis would like to get their hands on.  With very little prospects and at the end of the road, it is inevitable that a man like Coulouris will want to sell Lukas to the Nazis, but how we get to that point is intriguing.

In some scenes between them, even though the room is full of other characters, it seems as if we are watching a two-man play. They spar and take each other’s measure carefully in polite conversation.  Lukas, fresh from a daring escape and having been wounded in a previous mission, is the more emotionally brittle.  Coulouris comes off as suave, with the panache of a former diplomat who has learned early not to commit himself, who deals with life with a shrug of his shoulders, a man in evening dress with no neck to stick out.

His behavior is privately more unstable with his wife, alternately pleading and threatening her, but to the others, he maintains his British Public School manners and his Continental charm.  He is good at bridge, knows the right things to say.  He is apolitical, out for himself, but he feels more distaste for freedom fighters than for fascists because he understands the latter.  But he comes to admire Paul Lukas, if not for his political stance, then for his resiliency.  After the scene where he blackmails Lukas in return for not turning him over to the Nazis, Coulouris remarks after Lucile Watson and Donald Woods have left the room:

“The New World has left the room.  I feel less discomfort with you.  We are Europeans, born to trouble and understanding…They’re young.  The world has gone well for most of them.  For us, we’re like peasants…work, trouble, ruin.  But no need to call curses on the frost.  There it is.  There it will be again, always, for us.”

But he is no peasant and has never worked hard at anything.  It is only in his imagination that he identifies with the sorrows of European peasantry.  In a sense, he does have a master, too: the Nazis that have taken over all Europe.

In his final scene, we finally see his fear and panic as Paul Lukas, who despite his ill health is still a man of action, points a gun in Coulouris’ face and angrily tells him, “There is no substance to you.”  He both accuses, and mourns for Coulouris, because the blasé count, though he is frightened about dying now, he will have forgotten all about it in the morning if Lukas lets him get away. 

We know this is true, because George Coulouris, for all his benign charm, the salon and sidewalk café façade, has shown us his empty heart from the beginning.  We can’t write him off as just another bad guy.  He could be our houseguest, a friend or relative who could stab us in the back to save himself.  As Bette Davis says, “We have seen them in so many living rooms.”

Please have a look at the other entries in The Great Villain Blogathon here.

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My book on Ann Blyth's career—Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. will be published on June 18th.  I’d like to invite any blogger—film blogger or book blogger—to participate in a blog tour. I’ll be looking for blogs to schedule publicity-oriented posts beginning Monday, June 1st. The last day will be June 17th. If anyone wants to pick a day, please let me know so I can coordinate with others. Think of it as a kind of blogathon. On your day, you can post a review of the book (I’ll have ARCs – advanced reading copies - available in PDF form which I’ll email to you that you can read on your computer), or you can do a Q&A with me, or I can just send you a 250-word excerpt of the book, or you can just post the cover and a link to the Amazon page, if you will. Just a little something to spread the word. I will be posting here every day from June 1st through the 18th and I’ll be linking to your blogs, pushing traffic to you.

Among those 17 bloggers who participate, I’ll throw your names in a hat and pick five winners who will receive a print book of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. when it is published on the 18th.  The rest will receive an eBook file in whichever format you choose: ePub, Mobi, or PDF (Note, the ARC copies will not have the index).

For more on the upcoming book, please see this post.