Propaganda is weird. Seriously weird. For whatever reason, during the height of World War II, someone deemed it necessary to start redeeming the German character. Thus we get Watch on the Rhine, adapted from Lillian Hellman’s play of the same name. There’s nothing here that’s an attempt to justify fascism, but one of the central tenets of the film is that not all Germans (or Italians, for that matter) are bad people. In fact, the main villain is Romanian.
As the film begins, the Muller family is arriving in the United States through Mexico, presumably before the start of the war, or at least before the American involvement in the war (or they probably wouldn’t let a German through). Kurt Muller (Paul Lukas) is German while his wife Sara (Bette Davis) is an American expatriate coming home for the first time in 17 years. The Mullers have with them their three children: Joshua (Donald Buka), Babette (Janis Wilson), and Bodo (Eric Roberts, and not the one you immediately thought of). We learn right away that youngest child Bodo is a pretentious little snot.
