There is a peculiar story connected with "Hold Back the Dawn." Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote a short scene in which Charles Boyer's character soliloquizes to a cockroach, to express his sense of being trapped like a bug in a dismal place. It was cut. That so upset Wilder that he resolved to become a director, presumably so that henceforth his scripts would remain intact. He also resolved to cut out Boyer's lines in the final scenes of "Hold Back the Dawn" ("If he won't talk to a roach he won't talk to anyone"). I find all this hard to believe, although I have seen the video clip in which Wilder relates it. Billy Wilder knew how Hollywood worked. Why should he be so incensed at the loss of one short monologue? Probably, he already contemplated becoming a director. This made a good story. I find it even harder to believe that he would sabotage his own script, mute a major character just to indulge a fit of pique. That made a good story too. It explained a noticeable imbalance. "Hold Back the Dawn" juxtaposes two themes: the story of desperate emigrants unable to reach a new homeland, and the story of an improbable love between mismatched people. In the end, as Billy Wilder must have seen, the second plot dominates the first (so let's blame the missing cockroach).
Notwithstanding all this, "Hold Back the Dawn" is a wonderful film. Olivia de Havilland's Emmy Brown is a memorable character, and Olivia de Havilland gives a memorable performance. She lost the Oscar to her sister but, in my opinion, she deserved to win. She faced an incredibly difficult role. She first has to make believable how she could be so dazzled by a gigolo like Boyer's Georges Iscovescu, so dazzled as to marry him after a few hours' acquaintance. Emmy is naïve but she's not born yesterday. Olivia does it. We really can believe that, in her dull life, she has been searching for something exotic, something exciting. Then she must make believable how, even after being cruelly undeceived, she can continue to love him. Olivia does it. Boyer too must make believable his character's transformation, from heartlessness to sincerity. He does it, even without the dialogue Billy Wilder supposedly maliciously withheld. We see the transformation grow in his looks, in his eyes, during the scenes at the village fair. By the time Paulette Goddard betrays him we know he's in love. Actresses said they loved to play opposite Boyer - Ingrid Bergman in "Gaslight," Bette Davis in "All This and Heaven Too," Garbo in "Conquest" - because he was genuinely a nice guy and because, I think, he never upstaged them. He complemented them. He complements Olivia de Havilland. He feeds her lines perfectly. He gives her the foundation for her reactions, and he lets her shine.
"Hold Back the Dawn" displays a collection of Hollywood's expatriate French actors. There's Boyer, of course, and Boyer's friend Victor Francen - actually, he was Belgian, but he made his stage and screen career in France. Boyer had urged him to get out and come to Hollywood. He's better known to classic film fans here than he is in France. I mention to friends there Julien Duvivier's "La Fin du Jour." "Who's in it?" I name Louis Jouvet and Michel Simon. Eyes light up. Victor Francen. "Connais pas" (never heard of him). "Hold Back the Dawn" also brings in Micheline Cheirel, who later married the great Paul Meurisse. She was terrific in one of my favorites, "So Dark the Night." There's Madeleine Lebeau, who had fled with her Jewish husband Marcel Dalio and got to Hollywood in time for them both to be immortalized in "Casablanca." Victor Francen, reciting Emma Lazarus' poem, is striking, reminiscent of Charles Laughton in "Ruggles of Red Gap" reciting the Gettysburg Address. I have never heard the words better spoken. To that extent, the first aim of Billy Wilder's story comes through: a plea for compassion. Open the doors. Let desperate people enter. Relevant today? No need to comment.
Notwithstanding all this, "Hold Back the Dawn" is a wonderful film. Olivia de Havilland's Emmy Brown is a memorable character, and Olivia de Havilland gives a memorable performance. She lost the Oscar to her sister but, in my opinion, she deserved to win. She faced an incredibly difficult role. She first has to make believable how she could be so dazzled by a gigolo like Boyer's Georges Iscovescu, so dazzled as to marry him after a few hours' acquaintance. Emmy is naïve but she's not born yesterday. Olivia does it. We really can believe that, in her dull life, she has been searching for something exotic, something exciting. Then she must make believable how, even after being cruelly undeceived, she can continue to love him. Olivia does it. Boyer too must make believable his character's transformation, from heartlessness to sincerity. He does it, even without the dialogue Billy Wilder supposedly maliciously withheld. We see the transformation grow in his looks, in his eyes, during the scenes at the village fair. By the time Paulette Goddard betrays him we know he's in love. Actresses said they loved to play opposite Boyer - Ingrid Bergman in "Gaslight," Bette Davis in "All This and Heaven Too," Garbo in "Conquest" - because he was genuinely a nice guy and because, I think, he never upstaged them. He complemented them. He complements Olivia de Havilland. He feeds her lines perfectly. He gives her the foundation for her reactions, and he lets her shine.
"Hold Back the Dawn" displays a collection of Hollywood's expatriate French actors. There's Boyer, of course, and Boyer's friend Victor Francen - actually, he was Belgian, but he made his stage and screen career in France. Boyer had urged him to get out and come to Hollywood. He's better known to classic film fans here than he is in France. I mention to friends there Julien Duvivier's "La Fin du Jour." "Who's in it?" I name Louis Jouvet and Michel Simon. Eyes light up. Victor Francen. "Connais pas" (never heard of him). "Hold Back the Dawn" also brings in Micheline Cheirel, who later married the great Paul Meurisse. She was terrific in one of my favorites, "So Dark the Night." There's Madeleine Lebeau, who had fled with her Jewish husband Marcel Dalio and got to Hollywood in time for them both to be immortalized in "Casablanca." Victor Francen, reciting Emma Lazarus' poem, is striking, reminiscent of Charles Laughton in "Ruggles of Red Gap" reciting the Gettysburg Address. I have never heard the words better spoken. To that extent, the first aim of Billy Wilder's story comes through: a plea for compassion. Open the doors. Let desperate people enter. Relevant today? No need to comment.