Charles
Boyer was at the peak of his leading ‘ladies-man’ international megastar power,
particularly in Algiers and Love Affair.
Often cast as a dashing and debonair smooth talking womanizer and/or
the villainous type, Boyer with his thick French accent and handsome looks made
him an instant movie star. Which makes
the opening scene to director Mitchell Leisen’s Hold Back the Dawn and Boyer’s role in the film itself somewhat
meta in context and most certainly cast against type.
Beginning
on the backlot of the film’s distributor Paramount Pictures, Boyer plays
Romanian born gigolo Georges Iscovescu who has got quite a story for hotshot
film director Dwight Saxon (Mitchell Liesen cameoing). After being stuck at the Mexican border in
the Esperanza Hotel waiting indefinitely for an opportunity to become accepted
into the United States, a most unusual opening has come his way: marry an
American woman, become a US citizen and then drop her with divorce.
Setting
his sights on American schoolteacher Miss Emmy Brown (Olivia de Havilland in an
Oscar nominated performance) who is on a broken down school bus touring the
country, Iscovescu is quick to woo the woman’s heart by lending a helping hand
with her rowdy child students and giving the group a roof over their heads
while repairs on the vehicle can be completed.
It is here we see Mr. Boyer working his leading man charms on Mrs. De Havilland
in full force, working his magic while carrying on ruse with his mistress Anita
Dixon (Paulette Goddard) whom he plans to reunite with upon making it
stateside. That is, if his own interactions
with Miss Brown don’t start tugging at his heartstrings first.
With
a very real and ongoing immigration crisis playing out in the US, Hold Back the Dawn is a curiously still
relevant romcom despite being nearly a century of years apart. Loosely based on Ketti Frings’ novel of the
same name, Hold Back the Dawn which
was only recently revived and released on home video for the first time by
Arrow Academy is best remembered as the film which drove its screenwriter Billy
Wilder to go on to become a great film director himself.
Legend
has it Wilder had written an extended monologue where a depressed Boyer
converses with a cockroach in his hotel room, a scene Boyer persuaded director
Leisen to axe. An incensed Wilder never
screen wrote for someone else’s picture again thereafter. Moreover, the feud also extended to Ketti
Frings’ husband who like the subject of her novel had emigrated to the US by
marrying her. Wilder himself emigrated
to escape the Nazi regime in Germany and while the three figures Boyer, Frings
and Wilder all had something to bring to the table regarding their own
experiences with immigration, no one could quite agree on how to do it.
Hold Back the Dawn also carries with it
the urban Hollywood legend of an ongoing “feud” between actress Olivia de
Havilland and Joan Fontaine who copped the 1941 Oscar for her role in Alfred
Hitchcock’s Rebecca. While we’ll never really know the full story
which only Mrs. De Havilland herself can tell, what is true is that she’s
stunning in Hold Back the Dawn. Exuding both her doe-eyed sweet looks donned
in Gone with the Wind coupled with a
sense of command and determination about herself, notably standing up to the
irrepressible Boyer, de Havilland establishes herself here as a formidable
talent who could well have grabbed the golden statue out from under Joan
Fontaine.
Visually
director Leisen’s approach is standard, comprised of medium shots and/or crane
shots showing off the Mexican border set pieces, though many would say Hold Back the Dawn is better remembered
for the stories it generated about its star studded players and screenwriters
than for its own virtues. That’s a shame
because despite years of age, it still manages to address still relevant
talking points about the state of the immigration system without feeling dated
or leaning towards schmaltz. Not
necessarily a masterpiece but a damn good one which launched the careers of
many great talents involved in it.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki