Billy Wilder knew first hand what it was to be a refugee in the 1930s - he was one of the lucky ones. He came from Austria, originally, and fled in a timely manner before the Nazis' Anschluss in 1938. His family still suffered - many perished in the camps. But he was able, due to his stage and film work in Europe, to find employment in Hollywood. This enabled him to avoid the savage pitfalls of the American immigration quota system set up in the 1920s. You normally had to wait for an opening in the number of immigrants coming from each country to pass into the U.S.A., unless of course you were guaranteed a job or career in the U.S.A. That's why Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi had no problems showing up in the U.S. with their physics backgrounds and reputations. But how many people were like them, or like the creative film personality Wilder? Taking Kitti Frings' original story of European refugees in Mexico, Wilder and his partner Charles Brackett constructed the script for HOLD BACK THE DAWN. George Iscovescu (Charles Boyer)is a Rumanian gigolo who has ended up on the Mexican/American border. We see he has sneaked into the U.S., and is in Hollywood at Paramount Studios. He approaches a director a friend told him about, Dwight Saxon (Mitchel Leisin - the director of this film). The film we watch is the story that Iscovescu wants to interest Saxon in producing as a film.
Iscovescu is a pretty rotten individual - he uses his good looks and charm on women and lives off them. Only one woman (Anita Dixon - Paulette Goddard) is aware of his heel's personality, as she is an opportunist as well. She and George were an item together as dancing partners in Europe. Both are trying to get into America, but the quota is keeping George out. This is a relief to Inspector Hammock (Walter Abel) who is an astute member of the immigration service, and fully aware of how "desireable" both these people are as potential U.S. citizens. However, in 1941 there was a way to get into the U.S. if you could not fit a quota, or if you had no guaranteed job. The method (which was legal until about five years ago) was that you could marry an American citizen and become one. This method was misused, so the immigration service made sure that the marriages were truly love matches and then decided they were not good enough anymore. But that was long after 1941.
George looks for someone he can quickly marry, gain citizenship through, and then discard in a year or so. He finds an American school teacher named Emmy Brown (Olivia De Haviland), who is a little naive. He romances very quickly, and within a few weeks George and Emmy are married. Hammock is observing all this, and tries to warn Emmy, but she won't hear anything about George. The problem though is that Emmy is so in love with George that (despite his man-of-the-world shell) he starts responding to it. Anita keeps reminding him to go across the border, and send for her, but instead (to her growing dismay) she finds that George is spending all of his time getting to know Emmy better - and actually falling in love with her. Jealous and angry, Anita decides to reveal George and her past to Emmy - and the crisis of the film comes out of this revelation.
Frankly from my description one can say that HOLD BACK THE DAWN is superior soap opera. But in fact Wilder and Brackett took a serious look at the problem of immigration. Besides the antics of George and Anita and Emmy, they look at Professor Van den Leuken (Victor Francen, in one of his nicer parts), a minor-Fermi or Einstein, waiting for a college position promised him to be cleared: Bonbois (Curt Bois), a French hairdresser, hoping for an opening in the quota - who happens (thanks to Van den Leuken) to discover he has a secret historical weapon that will open his way into America; and - possibly the most touching figure in the film - Berta Kurz (Rosemary De Camp) a German (probably German Jewish) refugee with her husband, who is pregnant and really determined that her child is going to be an American citizen come hell or high water. And she achieves her goal.
The acting was of high order, and really Olivia De Haviland's best part after GONE WITH THE WIND two years earlier. If Melanie Wilkes was a decent, brave example of southern womanhood, Emmy is a woman who gradually finds she is an adult woman with sexual feelings. As a result of her performance, De Haviland got her first nomination for a best actress Oscar, but (ironically - and bitterly) she would lose to her own sister Joan Fontaine for SUSPICION.
Boyer played one of his darker figures, like Pepi Le Moko, who one could sympathize with after a fact - especially after he reveals he has a finer self than we thought. As for Goddard, this film and the earlier THE WOMAN demonstrated that she was a highly capable actress - not just a good reactor to her first husband Charlie Chaplin in two movies.
Wilder and Bracket had clashed with Leisin on other joint projects, just as Preston Sturgis had. This would prove to be the last screenplay by them that he (or any other director) would direct. Well enough for Wilder perhaps (and even his then partner Charles Brackett). But despite their complaints, Leisin's work was quite above average in this movie.
Iscovescu is a pretty rotten individual - he uses his good looks and charm on women and lives off them. Only one woman (Anita Dixon - Paulette Goddard) is aware of his heel's personality, as she is an opportunist as well. She and George were an item together as dancing partners in Europe. Both are trying to get into America, but the quota is keeping George out. This is a relief to Inspector Hammock (Walter Abel) who is an astute member of the immigration service, and fully aware of how "desireable" both these people are as potential U.S. citizens. However, in 1941 there was a way to get into the U.S. if you could not fit a quota, or if you had no guaranteed job. The method (which was legal until about five years ago) was that you could marry an American citizen and become one. This method was misused, so the immigration service made sure that the marriages were truly love matches and then decided they were not good enough anymore. But that was long after 1941.
George looks for someone he can quickly marry, gain citizenship through, and then discard in a year or so. He finds an American school teacher named Emmy Brown (Olivia De Haviland), who is a little naive. He romances very quickly, and within a few weeks George and Emmy are married. Hammock is observing all this, and tries to warn Emmy, but she won't hear anything about George. The problem though is that Emmy is so in love with George that (despite his man-of-the-world shell) he starts responding to it. Anita keeps reminding him to go across the border, and send for her, but instead (to her growing dismay) she finds that George is spending all of his time getting to know Emmy better - and actually falling in love with her. Jealous and angry, Anita decides to reveal George and her past to Emmy - and the crisis of the film comes out of this revelation.
Frankly from my description one can say that HOLD BACK THE DAWN is superior soap opera. But in fact Wilder and Brackett took a serious look at the problem of immigration. Besides the antics of George and Anita and Emmy, they look at Professor Van den Leuken (Victor Francen, in one of his nicer parts), a minor-Fermi or Einstein, waiting for a college position promised him to be cleared: Bonbois (Curt Bois), a French hairdresser, hoping for an opening in the quota - who happens (thanks to Van den Leuken) to discover he has a secret historical weapon that will open his way into America; and - possibly the most touching figure in the film - Berta Kurz (Rosemary De Camp) a German (probably German Jewish) refugee with her husband, who is pregnant and really determined that her child is going to be an American citizen come hell or high water. And she achieves her goal.
The acting was of high order, and really Olivia De Haviland's best part after GONE WITH THE WIND two years earlier. If Melanie Wilkes was a decent, brave example of southern womanhood, Emmy is a woman who gradually finds she is an adult woman with sexual feelings. As a result of her performance, De Haviland got her first nomination for a best actress Oscar, but (ironically - and bitterly) she would lose to her own sister Joan Fontaine for SUSPICION.
Boyer played one of his darker figures, like Pepi Le Moko, who one could sympathize with after a fact - especially after he reveals he has a finer self than we thought. As for Goddard, this film and the earlier THE WOMAN demonstrated that she was a highly capable actress - not just a good reactor to her first husband Charlie Chaplin in two movies.
Wilder and Bracket had clashed with Leisin on other joint projects, just as Preston Sturgis had. This would prove to be the last screenplay by them that he (or any other director) would direct. Well enough for Wilder perhaps (and even his then partner Charles Brackett). But despite their complaints, Leisin's work was quite above average in this movie.