Who stole Bogie's Oscar?

Taking the Oscar for Best Actor in 1944, and leaving Humphrey Bogart empty-handed for one of the greatest film performances of all time, was Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Lucile Watson), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Dashiell Hammett).

In the opening days of World War II, just before Germany begins to take over its neighboring countries, an American woman, Sara (Bette Davis) returns to Washington DC after 18 years of living in Europe, bringing her family with her. Her family includes her German husband, Kurt (Paul Lukas) a former engineer who has spent the last several years working for an underground anti-Nazi movement, exposing his family to poverty, danger, and a nomadic lifestyle. As Kurt is getting older and his health is flagging, the trip to America is meant to be his retirement from the movement. Unfortunately, a Romanian count, a houseguest of Sara's mother with heavy debts due to his habit of gambling away money he can't afford at Nazi card games at the German Embassy, discovers Kurt's identity and decides to blackmail him.

Many of the performances in this film struck me as kind of strange. The dialogue is oddly formal, and the delivery of the lines from many of the characters is stiff and uncertain. In a weird way, this makes the performances of Sara's children more convincing - they are children speaking in a language that is not their native tongue, and they were very convincing as such. What was odd was that Sara's brother, an American speaking in English, seemed just as stiff and formal to me, and so his performance struck me as very unnatural. Lucile Watson, Oscar nominated for her role as Sara's mother, is very convincing and entertaining as the intrusive, obnoxious, but well-intentioned matriarch. Bette Davis, the big name star of the film, was cast against type in a way that doesn't entirely work for her.

But, of course, the performance with which I concerned myself in watching this film was that of Paul Lukas. Lukas does indeed give a strong performance here. He does a fantastic job of drawing the audience in, getting them to care about his character and his story. The bottom line, though, is this: does he deliver a strong enough performance to deserve the Oscar over Bogart's iconic turn in Casablanca? The answer, in my opinion, is no. Lukas was very good, and worth seeing here, but time has shown that Bogart's role has remained unforgettable through several generations, while most people have probably never even heard of Paul Lukas. It is, however, easy to understand why Lukas would have taken the award at the time. In the midst of World War II, with the outcome still uncertain and American patriotism and anti-Nazi sentiment at an all-time high, Lukas and Bogart play men who essentially make the opposite decisions in the same circumstances. Lukas plays a man who, as the Nazis begin to come to power, sacrifices everything in his life to devote himself to taking up the cause of fighting them. Bogart plays a man who, as the Nazis begin to come to power, does everything he can to distance himself from the fight, to refuse to take sides, and to look out for himself alone. In hindsight, it is easy to see that Bogie should have taken it, but it is also easy to see why, in the heat of the moment, the emotional response was to award it to Lukas.

Movie trivia question: This film marked the first time that an actor directed himself to a Best Actor Oscar. It also marked the first time that a person won Oscars for both Best Actor and as producer for Best Picture (a feat that has only been repeated one other time to date). Who is the actor/director/producer, and what is the film?