Hot Picks
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Hold Back the Dawn
The Golden Door / Memo to a Movie Director
USA 1941
produced by Arthur Hornblow jr for Paramount
directed by Mitchell Leisen
starring Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland, Paulette Goddard, Victor Francen, Walter Abel, Curt Bois, Rosemary DeCamp, Eric Feldary, Nestor Paiva, Eva Puig, Micheline Cheirel, Madeleine Lebeau, Billy Lee, Mikhail Rasumny, Charles Arnt, Arthur Loft, Mitchell Leisen, Brian Donlevy, Veronica Lake, Richard Webb, June Wilkins, Leon Belasco, George Anderson, John Hamilton, Harold Landon
screenplay by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, based on the story Memo to a Movie Producer by Ketti Frings, music by Victor Young
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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Romanian Georges Isovescu (Charles Boyer) has been a dancer (and gigolo
on the side), touring Europe with some success - but then the war broke
out, and he fled to Mexico, in hopes of making it into the USA that way
... but US Immigration is in no hurry to let all the fugitives in, instead
has installed a quota system, forcing Isovescu, and scores of other, to
wait in a little border town, doing basically next to nothing, with no
idea when and if the journey to the US will proceed. In the little border
town Isovescu meets his old dancing partner Anita (Paulette Goddard), who
tells him about her scheme to marry an American which would speed up the
immigration process considerably - and as fate has it, Isovescu meets
young Emmy Brown (Olivia de Havilland), a naive American school teacher on
a trip to Mexico with her class, soon after that, sees to it that their
car breaks down to keep them in Mexico for a night - time enough to make
her fall in love with him and actually marry him. The next day, when she
leaves with her class he waves her good bye, he intends to never see her
again but make it across the border once his papers are cleared, and then
relaunch his dancing career with Anita in New York ... but then Emmy
returns to surprise him - she has taken a week off so they can have their
honeymoon together - and just in time when immigration inspector Hammock
(Walter Abel) wants to investigate scam marriages between Americans and
foreigners. As he fears Hammock would make Emmy see through his scheme and
she would annul their marriage, he decides to go on a impromptu romantic
trip through the country with her ... and wouldn't you know it, he
gradually falls in love with her. However, when they return to the
border town, Anita senses he might not follow through with their scheme to
make it to New York, and thus opens Emmy's eyes to who Isovescu really is,
and though she doesn't annul the marriage when Hammock tries to convince
her to, she leaves in tears - and back at the American side of the border,
she has a terrible car accident that puts her into a coma. And now
Isovescu knows what he has to do, be at her side when she wakes up, at
whatever cost (and that cost could be high indeed, like being banned from
the USA for good) ... Now I won't for one moment claim that
this movie is entirely kitsch-free (especially the happy ending is a bit
too much), but it also shows how great Hollywood romances could be back in
the day: Not only is the story skillfully structured, it also presents us
with fleshed out characters who each have their own arc, it's beautifully
put together, is set in the movie's here and now instead of telling some
far-fetched fairy tale, and the entire cast is first rate. So if you're at
all into classic Hollywood, and no matter whether or not into romances
(not my favourite genre by the way), you're more likely than not to really
dig this movie!
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