“Hold Back the Dawn” is a romance that marks the second unhappy marriage between a screenwriter, and director Mitchell Leisen. Both unions were so unhappy… they drove the respective writers for both projects; Preston Sturges with “Remember the Night” and Billy Wilder with “Dawn,” to strike out on their own and suffer no filmmaker again. They would become directors themselves. It’s an appropriate déjà vu that Wilder, with “Dawn,” would see the same unhappy end as Sturges with “Night.” Since, this is a project that dabbles in unceremonious ends to unions born from pragmatism. “Dawn” stars Charles Boyer as a Romanian attempting to immigrate to America through unholy matrimony with a small town school teacher played by Olivia de Havilland. He is simultaneously involved with a fellow citizenship swindler, Paulette Goddard. It’s only fair that Leisen, as director, gets majority rights to the children of “Night” and “Dawn.” While the fiery Wilder would later speak negatively towards Leisen’s “window dresser” lack of auteurism, Wilder is forgetting that window dressing, also, is an art. If it can be said that Leisen made significant mark upon the style of 30s and 40s Hollywood romance, it is his capacity to portray yearning. As a closeted gay man, Leisen possibly channeled his longing into his tales of romances that each carry an innate sense of doom. Not just that - but a fatalism that inhabits the relationships from the start. Whether it is between Death himself and a nubile mortal girl, between an upright lawyer and an unrepentant con woman, or - here, between a would-be immigrant with a hidden agenda and a school teacher who lays her life as open as a book. So, Leisen led both the legendary Sturges and Wilder into professional marriages that ended so badly - they each (thankfully for us all) concluded they’d be better off alone. Leisen always did have a touch for ending things.
— there is a fence back there, you americans make a very definite point of it.— i gather you don't like us very much.— VERY little.Watched this last night and really liked it and why wouldn’t I when it has Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland and Paulette Goddard in one film, co-written by Billy Wilder (the same year he wrote Ball of Fire) and directed by Mitchell Leisen (who even appears in the film as a director), with a small cameo from Veronica Lake too!Everything is told through a flashback, with Georges sitting down and telling his life story to a director just to get some money. feels more like a confession than anything else. Boyer is stuck in Mexico while waiting to enter the US. He is not a great person at first, he survives through his looks and small tricks, but he plays it all so naturally. Then he runs into his old partner in crime Paulette Goddard, who gives him the idea of marrying an American woman. That is where Olivia de Havilland comes in—a schoolteacher who is completely unlike the world Georges comes from. And of course, he targets her as part of his plan. Olivia de Havilland is really the heart of the film. Emmy is such a sweet character, and before he knows it, Georges starts falling for her. Charles Boyer does his usual "charming but suspicious" European man role so well that I almost forget how calculated he was at the beginning, which in a way kind of weakens his character.Maybe that is what I liked most about it too... how the film slowly changes. It starts like a light scam story, then I thought it was a film within a film, and then it turns into a romance told in flashback. The hotel setting is also great. Everyone is stuck, everyone is hoping, and Georges is just one of them trying to cheat the system. What surprised me, though, is how a little bold it looks (for it's time). There are moments that suggest intimacy. Boyer and de Havilland are not completely innocent. At times, Georges uses his emotions very deliberately, almost seducing her with his words and looks, while Emmy slowly falls for it because she genuinely believes him. By the end, things become more complicated. Georges has to deal with what he has done. Emmy’s innocence meets reality, and you see that change. There is also a little emotional weight as everyone faces the results of their choices. And as mean Paulette Goddard was in this, how did they let her get a good ending in it? amazing how few of these films were still able to get around those rules.This was only my third Leisen film, and he did it again. At times it looks like a Sturges or Sirk film, with Wilder’s touch noticeable as well. It is interesting that Wilder later became more strict about directing his own scripts after this. A fun watch -- one of my only complaints was that it ended too soon. Boyer runs toward de Havilland and it cuts to “The End,” which left me a bit confused, it needed like a minute or two more....for years i've loved him, just as you do. only there's this difference, i'm his sort. i'm dirt... but, so is he. we belong together.
I think I’m falling headfirst beyond repair for Olivia de Havilland and her Million-Watt smile. You know the one. That sparkles through the two beacons of good she calls eyes. To have a pitch black room feeling like the Summer sun looks dull by comparison. And if this is any sort of excuse for a reasonable world, there’s a stare here that she does just that has to go down as some new definition of alchemy. Where anyone lucky enough to be caught in her crosshairs might just for a moment forget the forlorn idea of anyone else even existing on this wretched planet we know to be Earth. With a voice like fresh snow, on a hot July afternoon. That all but melts as soon as it falls on your ears. Watching her go through any sort of pain because she thinks too much of her fellow man to even imagine for one second that she would be on the other end of their cruelty… it hurt me, man. I suppose, yes, I can accept some solace in the knowledge that even those who set out to use her as part of so-called ‘bigger plans’ could not spend any length of time in her presence without ultimately succumbing to her otherworldly radiance. And having a much-needed change of heart. And yet I guess, mostly, I just wish that wasn’t a lesson that had to be learned in the first place. No bad bone in her body, and yet she had her heartstrings plucked until they came apart one by one. But the fingers of those who toy with kindness will always end up bloodier than the hearts they played with. And those who are pure in mind will always find it easier to live with themselves than the ones that take advantage. That same purity of heart holds the power capable to change those brave enough to let it in. As the two trains, passing by the same station on their way towards very different ways of life. Can find it in themselves to HOLD BACK THE DAWN and ride off into the sunset of a life forged from pain into strength, two as one.
