Format: TCM
Viewing: First
Director: Herman Shumlin, Hal Mohr (uncredited)
I had never seen Watch on the Rhine (1943), which is a bit odd. It stars Bette Davis, who is tops in my book. But, the real reason is: back in the early 1990's I was a high school drama kid. In the spring of 1992, I worked tech support and understudy on Watch on the Rhine, which my school took to UIL One-Act Play competition. We trimmed the show down to a 40 minute version of the 1941 stage play,* which I guess I ran through dozens and dozens of times.
The play was a formative experience for multiple reasons, not least of which included pondering the content of the play every day for months on end. But, still, I was sixteen when I read the play and just turned 17 when the experience was over. So my perspective was widened but life hadn't come at me. I didn't yet fully grasp the forces at work, what had happened in the decade or more before the war, how WWI led directly to WWII, and that the world is not a simple place and always 100 times more complex than you believe at first blush, ways that inform the movie and play.