Hold Back the Dawn

Composite Score: 84.07

Starring: Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland, Paulette Goddard, Victor Francen, Walter Abel, Curt Bois, Rosemary DeCamp, Eric Feldary, and Nestor Paiva

Director: Mitchell Leisen

Writers: Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder

Genres: Drama, Romance, Comedy

MPAA Rating: Passed

Box Office: N/A

Why should you Watch This Film?

                Hold Back the Dawn is the film adaptation of Ketti Frings’s novel of the same name about a Romanian dancer seeking to immigrate to the United States by any means necessary. The film, directed by Mitchell Leisen and adapted by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, stars Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland, and Paulette Goddard as the central players in its dramatic love triangle, full of lies and passion. Boyer plays the dancer – Georges Iscovescu – who wants to move to the U.S. at the start of World War II but is forced to enter via Mexico due to an unfortunate past misunderstanding with an unnamed wealthy New York woman. De Havilland stars as the innocent American schoolteacher – Emmy Brown – who becomes the target of Iscovescu’s charms as he seeks to woo and marry her to expedite his immigration process (four weeks as opposed to five-to-eight years). And Goddard features as the temptress from Iscovescu’s past – Anita Dixon – who urges him to leave Emmy once he gains entry to the states to join her in a new act that they can take to American high society. In addition to its high stakes emotional romantic drama, the film has also been celebrated for its critique of the American quota system in immigration and received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Lead Actress for de Havilland.

Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?

                Like the romances of Sabrina, 10 Things I Hate About You, or You’ve Got Mail, this romantic dramedy falls back on the timeless practice of having the male lead lie to the leading lady before falling madly in love with her. As I have said before on this blog, and I’m sure I’ll say it again, this particular movie trope is not indicative of the best practices in real world relationships. It makes for some excellent dramatic and situational irony, which makes for an entertaining film, but it does not make for the establishment of true healthy relationships. While forgiveness also plays an important role in healthy relationships, that aspect of the liars-to-overs trope rarely plays out on screen. Hold Back the Dawn is no different in that regard, holding instead the belief that a single grand romantic gesture can cover and atone for the multitude of lies that led to that point. Again, it’s greatly entertaining, but if you think about it in a real-world context, it is a bit troubling.

So wait, why should you Watch This Film?

                While I do wish that there was a bit more weight given to the consequences of Georges’s deception, the film does a great job of selling you on the romance at its center and getting you to buy in to the drama of its climax. Boyer does a fantastic job selling the audience (and Miss Brown) on the character of Georges Iscovescu – dubious moralist though he may be. Boyer’s suave nature and the melodramatically romantic dialogue that he is given in the early scenes let the audience know that he is no stranger to pursuing women and that he has gotten fairly good at it – good enough to convince Emmy to marry him after one extended 5:00 a.m. conversation. Though if it were only Boyer’s smooth ways carrying the film, it would fall short of greatness. It is the film’s second act and de Havilland’s innocently hopeful portrayal of Emmy that wins the audience (and Iscovescu) over. When she shows up unannounced at Iscovescu’s hotel while he is dining with his co-conspirator, Anita, it becomes clear that we are in for a true love triangle treat in this film. The pseudo-honeymoon that the Iscovescus take serves as a softening of the audience toward Georges and of Georges toward Emmy, setting the stage for the inevitable reveal and near tragic final act. Thanks to some truly well-acted sequences, the final act delivers an emotional and riveting series of revelations and responses that are sure to leave you satisfied.

                If compelling love stories alone are not enough to get you going for a film, Hold Back the Dawn also contains a compelling secondary story about the other immigrants staying at the same border hotel as Iscovescu. In addition to Iscovescu, there are three other featured immigrant cases in this film, each having to deal with the ornery (and maybe a little corrupt) immigration Inspector Hammock. First, there is Bonbois, a barber whose request for a visa keeps getting rejected, implicitly due to Hammock’s love of the work he does as a barber. He discovers with the help of another of the immigrants staying at the Hotel Esperanza that his family heritage traces back to the Marquis de Lafayette, making him an honorary citizen of the United States, earning him passage into the nation. Then there is the story of the Kurzes, an Austrian couple expecting a child who have been denied passage into the U.S. due to the husband’s tuberculosis. Their story culminates in a powerful scene of the wife fooling the border agents into letting her cross and giving birth to their child in the United States. Finally, there is Van Den Luecken and his two daughters who have devoted themselves to celebrating all that is American while being stuck for an extended period of time at the border. Their story is left unresolved, but they represent yet another positive representation of immigrants in the film who have been kept arbitrarily from entering the US due to a problematic immigration system of quotas. Obviously, the end of the quota system in the 1960s was a massive leap forward in American immigration policy, but there are still plenty of issues that need solving, and this film serves as a reminder that border and immigration issues have always been things that the U.S. has dealt with and that immigration is also an important part of American heritage and culture – that immigrants should be celebrated and not feared or turned away.

                Hold Back the Dawn attains its place of greatness thanks to the well-acted and compelling dramatic love triangle at its heart and its tangential portraits of immigrants that challenged current policy stances and serve as a solid reminder of America’s need for immigrants. Its trope of liars-to-lovers remains as problematic as ever, but it overcomes that through some great writing and acting to sell the fiction to the audience. It is currently not available to stream on any of the main streaming services, but if you can find a copy somewhere, it is certainly worth the watch.