User reviews

Charles Boyer, stuck in Mexico due to immigration problems, plans to get into the United States by way of marriage to schoolteacher Olivia de Havilland, who is under the impression that Boyer really loves her. Beautifully-made romantic drama from director Mitchell Leisen has a complicated scenario which sometimes falls prey to its uneven tone (the linchpin of the plot has Boyer deceiving de Havilland as long as possible, which undermines their courtship sequences with a bit of sourness). Still, the look of the picture is fascinating, the art direction and cinematography vivid and memorable...and, as always, Olivia plays a simple, goodhearted woman like nobody's business; she simply glows in roles such as this. Boyer is also fine--though, because of the mechanics of the plot, he isn't terribly sympathetic. Adapted from Ketti Frings' (then-unsold) novel, "Memo to a Movie Producer" by Oscar-nominated screenwriters Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder; de Havilland also received a nomination, as did the film as Best Picture. A gem. *** from ****

A fabulous film with an all star cast of Charles Boyer, Olivia De Havilland and Paulette Goddard. Boyer plays a man who is trying to get US citizenship, the only way by which turns out to be, marrying De Havilland's character. There is a sweet scene between the two when they set off on honeymoon and they play beautifully together throughout. Paulette Goddard is wonderful as the scheming other half and it's nice to see at the end that she gets what she's after!! Clever start to the film too - look out for Veronica Lake making a movie - and a lovely ending that really couldn't get any better.

This movie was nominated for six Oscars including, Best Picture, Best Actress (de Havilland). This is the movie that supposedly started De Havilland's life-long feud with her sister, Joan Fontaine, who in 1941, ran against her and won for Best Actress in Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941), which had been proceeded, the previous year for a Best Actress nomination in Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), and followed by a nomination in 1944 for The Constant Nymph (1943). One might well imagine that the sisters were in constant competition during the 40s.

Hold Back the Dawn (1941) is a nicely told romance about a young and vulnerable young school teacher, Emmy (Olivia de Havilland), with a busload of kids, traveling in a Mexican border town during an Independence Day side trip. However, on the Mexican side of the border, there are several European refugees desperately trying to enter the US, no doubt because of the unrest in Europe at the time.

While watching this movie, released before the Pearl Harbour Attack on the US, it is probably helpful to remember that Hollywood was not yet fully engaged with "going to war," even though Billy Wilder was one of the writers of the screen play for the movie.

So, European refugees waited--at the Hotel Espiranza--to get their green cards (for legally crossing the border into the US). Two of these waiters were a dance team, an Austrian woman, Anita Dixon (Paulette Goddard), and her former professional dance partner, Romanian Georges Iscovescu (Charles Boyer). Goddard meets Boyer in this border town to tell him how she was able to get her green card in record time by marrying an American and then divorcing him after successfully making it into America. Anita encourages George to do the same thing by taking advantage of the American school teacher's obvious attraction to him. He starts down this path, but with unsuspected results.

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Goddard makes an excellent vixen in this movie. One wonders---as we see scenes with her and de Havilland here---how well she would have played Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind opposite de Havilland, since she was one of many women who did the screen test for the part.

As good a script as Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett ever wrote! Mitchell Leisen directs with some flair too. This film drove Wilder to become a director after Charles boyer had a sequence cut - from then on, Wilder was able to protect his screenplays from such treatment. But any trouble behind the scenes doesn't really harm the film itself, which is a joy. An even more abrasive protagonist than usual, Charles Boyer's gigolo nevertheless builds up colossal sympathy - it's an approach Wilder would replicate in THE LOST WEEKEND to Oscar-winning effect. But EVERYBODY in this film is marvelous, as is the inventive story, inspired by Wilder's own time in mexico awaiting a visa to allow him into the States.

How can you be French and not love this film? First the lead is French;and in a small supporting part,there is Victor Francen,one of Julien Duvivier's ("La Fin Du Jour ",1939) and Abel Gance's ("J'accuse" 1918 and 1937) favorite actors.Plus "La Marseillaise " in the final sequences.Plus Olivia De Havilland who has been living in Paris for years.Except for Bertrand Tavernier,most of FRench critics do not speak highly of Mitchell Leisen's overlooked gem.

This is the kind of superior melodrama I love.Olivia De Havilland is one of the greatest actresses of all time,one of those who never think twice when it comes to playing demeaning parts.She is so moving,so tender and so endearing that beauty Paulette Goddard almost leaves me indifferent.And I wonder why Boyer...

The very structure of the film is highly original,being a long flashback,the hero telling his story (perhaps too much voice over) to a director to earn money (but we will know why in the last minutes )because he thinks all his trials can make a great film!Truth can be stranger than fiction cause he is in a film himself! The subject of the movie is still topical today when you see so many people leaving their country for the wealthy ones (not only America:in France ,Russians and others are actually fighting to get French citizenship).For that matter,one of the peaks is when Victor Francen declaims Emma Lazarus's poem which is graven on a tablet within the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty stands.There are subplots and Mitchell Leisen's talent manages to make them as interesting as the three leads .You may remember the lady who wants his baby to be an American and the way she makes her dream come true,maybe more than Boyer/Havilland's honeymoon.

A honeymoon that takes them to an old Mexican village where they go to mass,with a candle in their hand.A scene that recalls Murnau's "daybreak" .

Emmy (De Havilland) is a woman who has never known love.She really wants to hold back the dawn ,to make her dream longer than the night.She gave all she had and she 's so altruistic she even returns good for evil.When she realizes that she's through with her pursuit of happiness,she simply puts her glasses.

I had seen Leisen's film when I was still a child.I saw it last night.With the same pleasure.

A shamelessly melodramatic tale of a Romanian man trying to get into America via Mexico by tricking a visiting school teacher into marrying him. Charles Boyer is the con man and Olivia de Havilland is the innocent teacher; both turn in excellent performances. It's hard not to get swept up in the romance as Boyer purrs "It is not this kiss I want. It is all your kisses. It's all your life," even though we know he's being disingenuous, and worse yet, has an old lover (Paulette Godard) waiting in the wings for him. You can probably guess how it's going to go, but some of the twists the story takes in getting there are less predictable, and there's also some pretty nice footage in a Mexican town and out on a beach. Early on we also get cameos of Veronica Lake and director Mitchell Leisen on a Hollywood film set, from which most of the story is told in a flashback.

As immigration is such a hot button issue in America these days, it was interesting to get the film's position on it, even if that position is not all that surprising. It holds America up as a virtuous land of immigrants and quotes the "tired, poor, huddled masses" line from the Statue of Liberty, but on the other hand, it doesn't want people cheating to get in (the immigration officer, played by Walter Abel, is a sympathetic character). Olivia de Havilland's characters points out how people criticizing immigrants were descended from immigrants too (unless they were related to Pocahontas, as she puts it), and the ideal of how every immigrant has a chance to be successful in America. On the other hand, it was a little tough to hear her say "scum" at the end of an exchange that started off so well:

• It's like a lake, clear and fresh, and it'll never get stagnant while new streams are flowing in.
• Well, your people are building pretty high dams to stop those streams.
• Just to keep out the scum, Georges.

Make of that what you will, or maybe don't make too much of it. The film is a romance first and foremost with this as its backdrop, and like many romances, it's idealized and sentimental. If you like that sort of thing, and want to see 25-year-old Olivia de Havilland in part to honor her recent passing as I did, this could be your film.

This movie is worth watching for the performances of Olivia deHavilland--unbelievably naive but Olivia has an internal sincerity that carries it off--and Charles Boyer--jaded and conniving but wonderful and romantic, a much better actor than is remembered. And Paulette Goddard too. Just watching these 3 actors in a movie is great fun. It's also an interesting and sympathetic view of a group of immigrants fleeing the war in Europe who had made it to Mexico with the hope of getting into the US. (The film came out in 1941--probably before the US had entered the war.) Boyer is Romanian, a dancer and gigolo who is broke and feeling hopeless by the time he meets Olivia, a teacher who has brought her students on a field trip to Mexico for the 4th of July (which seems like rather an odd choice when you think about it). And, there is some really tiresome interactions between the teacher and her quite incorrigible students--but hang on, it passes. Then we get to watch Boyer's insincere seduction of her and then her authentic seduction of him, the discovery of his trick and potential paradise lost. The ending? Boy, I'd love to know the story of that ending--was it the original as written? Please Paramount, put it out on DVD with commentary. Somebody must know. Anyway, despite its flaws, the performances are wonderful and it's a viewing pleasure. (Yes, a 10 is a little high for a rating--in quality, it's probably more like an 8, but in fun- value, I still give it 10, and maybe it will help get it DVDed.)

Charles Boyer (Iscovescu) is a Romanian gigolo who applies to enter the US and is told that he will have to wait 8 years, so he rents a room in a Mexican border town and waits. In to the town comes Paulette Goddard (Anita) who is his ex-partner in both romance and pulling scams across Europe by preying on the wealthy. She has got herself American citizenship and points Boyer in the right direction. All he has to do is marry an American citizen and he can gain his entry in about a month. Thus begins the search for an American bride who Boyer can marry, gain access into the US, get a quick divorce and then team up with Anita once again to fleece the rich. Enter school-teacher Olivia de Havilland (Emmy). However, immigration officer Walter Abel (Hammock) is wise to the plan and does not intend to let Boyer get away with things.

The film is overlong with certain scenes that stretch proceedings a little tiresomely, eg, the schoolchildren, the visit to a Mexican village and the rather painful reciting of some nonsense on a plaque that supports the Statue of Liberty.....oh for goodness sake.....get on with the film....! However, set against this, Boyer and Goddard are good in their roles and their performances elevate this film to the score I have given as the story alone isn't fast-moving enough to maintain interest. I found de Havilland a bit too soppy and so not as interesting a character, although she has her moments towards the end. Walter Abel does a good job as the immigration officer but the rest of the supporting cast at the hotel are all quite irritating. We didn't need any of them for the story.

Boyer does everything with such smoothness that I'm sure he could have slept with the whole cast if he chose to. After all, it's what French people like to do. That and performing mime routines.

It is a sad reflection that many of the movies made so long ago still compare brilliantly with the best of today. "Hold Back the Dawn" is one of those - superbly put together by Billy Wilder & Charles Brackett, and with some of the finest acting of 1941. Outtanding are Charles Boyer, in what I feel is his best acting, and Olivia de Havilland who apparently had to go to Paramount to be appreciated (her two Oscar films were made there, and she was nominated also for this one!) is a standout. Paulette Goddard in a role almost written for her was very good, and the supporting cast was excellent. Migrants trying to get into the United States has always been a hot topic, but here it is treated sympathetically in a very informative way. I have to say the ending was not well done, and one gets the feeling all was not well somewhere.

I voted this film 6/10 and saw it with a mixture of enjoyment and disappointment, so felt rather ambivalent about it.First the enjoyment, my prime purpose was to see the beautiful Paulette Goddard (who was about second in the running to play "Scarlet O'Hara" in 1939 - she did have a passing resemblance to Viv.)There were good location beach shots on the Mexican border with the USA and environs of Los Angeles.The studio got away from the claustrophobic 100% studio scenes which for reason of economy were often prevalent in Hollywood at the time.The screenplay had occasional flashes of intelligence in its writing and the scriptwriter remembered to add a line that sea water had to be flushed out of the car's cooling system (which I thought at the time was stupid when Charles Boyer is seen to put it into the car's radiator when the engine overheats).

Now for the criticisms, first the dreadful stock interpretations and racist stereotype portrayals of Mexicans (and other foreign nationals) as rather childlike, indolent and rather stupid.I notice that even humble Mexicans doing manual jobs in US films always speak enough English to make themselves understood.Conversely how many American characters in US financed films are seen conversing in Spanish to Mexicans on their home soil?As I am married to a retired 63 year old school teacher, I can assure IMDb.com readers that no single teacher would be permitted to go on a school trip abroad especially without a TA to help.Teachers, far from the irritating stereotypes portrayed by film producers, are usually worldly characters and would be very unlikely to fall for the glib charms of a gigolo.They are kept busy doing lesson planning, meeting Government targets and other bureaucratic requirements,They certainly would not have enough time supervising a school trip to engage in personal romantic dalliances.Just interview any modern school teacher!I did not believe in Olivia de Havilland's character, especially the sickly sentimental final scene when she speaks to the immigration officer expunging all the moral guilt from Charles Boyer.Nevertheless my retired school teacher wife was engrossed throughout the film so I suppose for her it was mere escapism.P.S. she knows about my weakness for beautiful raven haired 1940s film actresses!

It is curious how times change. More than 60 years ago, people fleeing Europe went to Mexico to try to gain access to the United States. Today, instead of going the legal route, they would probably hire a coyote to take them to the other side of the border! The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This film is interesting because of the screen play by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, although the IMDB only lists the latter one as the writer. It is a mistake to bypass the great Billy Wilder, when we see his imprint everywhere in the movie.

The movie begins with a disheveled Charles Boyer going to the Paramount lot to talk to the director, Mitchell Leisen. Boyer's character, George Iscovescu, has met the director in the Riviera and comes to beg for a loan of $500, a tidy sum in those days. From there the story unfolds.

George quickly learns after arriving in the border town, that because being Rumanian he must wait about 8 years to enter the United States because of immigration quotas. He quickly learns the only way to make it across the border is if he would marry an American woman, and voila!, Emmy Brown, just happens to come to spend the 4th of July holiday with her students, thus his chance to make it in a legal way.

The cast of the film is excellent. Charles Boyer, in spite of not being upfront with the naive Emmy, doesn't make us hate him. He redeems himself at the end. Olivia de Havilland was perfect for the immature Emmy. She falls in love with a man that is trying to use her as his ticket to the promised land. Paulette Goddard, as Anita was very good. Walter Abel is the despised Inspector Hammock, the immigration officer everyone in town hates.

Don't miss it either on tape or DVD format.

"Hold Back the Dawn" is the kind of film that would have been labeled as a "women's picture" back in 1941, the year of release. I hate that term, though, because it condescendingly assumes that there's nothing in a movie like this for men to enjoy. On the contrary, there's plenty to enjoy for everyone, including a story that has taken on renewed urgency and relevancy considering the debate swirling around illegal immigration at this moment in our country.

Charles Boyer plays a playboy fleeing war-torn Europe and stranded in Mexico awaiting an opportunity to get into America. Olivia de Havilland plays a plain Jane school teacher who falls for his false claims of love and accepts his proposal of marriage, not realizing that he's only using her to get into the country. But of course there wouldn't be a movie if he didn't eventually fall in love with her for real and have compunction about his actions.

It's interesting to see how immigration was handled in 1941, and how lax border security was. The film is also sympathetic to the plights of those trying to gain entry, something many people now would benefit from being reminded of.

Poor de Havilland was always getting cast as dowdy, naive spinsters, which is a shame given how luminous she can be as an actress. No matter. Let the Oscar nomination she received for this film be her consolation. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Screenplay (penned by famous screenwriting team Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder), Best Art Direction (B&W), Best Cinematography (B&W), and Best Dramatic Score, a puzzling nomination since the film's only music is that heard during the opening and end credits.

Grade: B+

Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland and Paulette Goddard deserve high praise for their performances in this poignant and touching slice of Americana from Mitchell Leisen (who later directed de Havilland in 'To Each His Own'). Basically the story of a European gigolo (Boyer) who wants to get into the United States without a long wait in Mexico. His girlfriend and ex-dancing partner (Paulette Goddard) convinces him to marry an unsuspecting American schoolteacher (de Havilland)in order to gain fast entry before ditching her. Colorful supporting characters come to life--most notably Walter Abel as an immigration officer and Rosemary de Camp as a pregnant woman who wants her child born in the U.S. Boyer narrates the story to a film director (Mitchell Leisen) and we see the story unfold in flashback from his point of view. Excellent work by all concerned. My only complaint is the abrupt ending--which I understand was a result of trouble with Boyer who wanted certain scenes rewritten--a final scene between him and de Havilland would have been preferable to what seems like a letdown for the finale. As it is, it looks like choppy editing before "The End" flashes on the screen. Still, a romantic drama with an abundant amount of dry humor and some crackling dialogue by Paulette Goddard who sparkles in her role as "the other woman". Her confrontation scene with the schoolteacher is one of the highlights of the film. De Havilland was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for this, but lost to her sister, Joan Fontaine, for 'Suspicion'.

Set in a border town, Hold Back the Dawn deals with the issue of immigration by marriage. When Charles Boyer can't get into the United States legally, he waits it out by staying in Tijuana and talking to other immigrant-hopefuls. He meets Paulette Goddard, who shares that she married an American to get into the country. When he comes across an innocent and oblivious schoolteacher, Olivia de Havilland, on a field trip with her students, he decides to seduce her and follow Paulette's lead.

I don't know why Olivia was singled out and nominated for an Academy Award for this performance; it was another simpering, mildly stupid character like Melanie Wilkes. Besides being incredibly naïve (which only translated, to me, as vapid), she really didn't do much acting. It was Charles who had layers to his character and had to alter his emotions for different scenes. As it is the Hot Toasty Rag's motto to "right the wrong", we nominated Charles in 1941 instead.

Hold Back the Dawn isn't my favorite story, but it does have a unique angle: Charles's behavior is wrong. It's not considered admirable to do anything and everything to get into the United States. I basically found the beginning slow, the ending melodramatic, and Olivia's character silly. Besides that. . .

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.

Alternates between being touching and hokey with the former edging ahead by the end which, as previous reviewer. Snoop says, is better than the first half. I guess your opinion of this film ultimately rises or falls on whether you believe in the power of Mexican village culture to redeem a crumb bum gigolo (well played by Boyer). Let's just say that at this early stage in their writing careers, before they learned to serve their hopefulness with a liberal dose of cynicism, the writing team of Brackett and Wilder failed to convince this viewer. And Mitchell Leisen's too mushy, soft edged direction didn't help in that area either. Had it not been for a lovely (in both senses) performance by Olivia and a nicely contrasting sexy turn by Paulette Goddard I'd be rating it considerably lower. B minus. PS...The rather perfunctory look at Veronica Lake playing herself speaks volumes as to how this prima donna was perceived by the industry.

Charles Boyer and Olivia de Havilland star in "Hold Back the Dawn," a 1941 film also starring Paulette Goddard, Walter Abel, and Rosemary de Camp.

This film is an A all the way - the cast, the script by Wilder and Brackett, and direction by Mitchell Liesen, all great.

The story is about immigrants stuck in Mexico as they wait to get into the United States, most of them living at the Hotel Esperanza. There's a quota, and depending on what country you're from, the quota can mean a long wait.

"Hold Back the Dawn" is told in flashback, beginning with Boyer, as Roumanian Georges Iscovescu, approaching someone at Paramount, trying to sell his story. It begins with Iscovescu, a gigolo, in Mexico, hoping to get into the U.S. and being told by the immigration consul (Walter Abel) that he has to wait.

His old partner in crime, Anita (Paulette Goddard) shows up -- the two have quite a love 'em or leave 'em operation going. When schoolteacher Emmy Brown shows up with some students on a tour, he sweeps her off her feet and marries her so he can have citizenship. The idea is to then dump Emmy and meet Anita back in New York where they can take up their scam again.

Georges can't return to the states with Emmy immediately, there's a waiting period, and Georges plans to go to her home town and let her down easy before going to New York. But she shows up on a school break to spend the week with him.

De Havilland is wonderful as a the pretty, naive Emmy, who falls in love with Georges. As the cold Georges, Boyer is very convincing as a man who turns the charm on and off like a faucet, but as he gets to know Emmy, he starts to thaw. Goddard is vivacious and beautiful as Anita, in love with Georges herself and not wanting anyone else in the way.

In a supporting role, Rosemary Camp is Bertha Kurz, a pregnant woman determined that her child will be born in the United States. An underrated actress, DeCamp was a TV mainstay through the '70s and did many appearances in the '80s as well. Accents were her specialty. She turns in a lovely performance here. Walter Abel is good as the harried counsel.

The Mexican town and beat-up hotel make for a perfect atmosphere where people exist while waiting to begin their lives in the U.S. A beautiful film with a script by a man who knew well what it meant to be an immigrant, Billy Wilder. A little off the beaten track from his more usual fare, but no less brilliant.

I liked "Hold Back the Dawn" even more upon my second viewing of it. This is a nice pleasant enough film which features two great acting performances by Charles Boyer and Olivia de Havilland at their peak. If you can get past the necessarily stilted nature of the script, it is an engaging film even if the ending is sort of dumb. I thought that the middle was the best part. So for this mixture of positive and negative aspects I rate this film a 7/10. And this subject of fiancé visas is evergreen and the theme of a reality show now called "90 Day Fiancé" which is quite good really. (The visa is for 90 days, during which time you must marry them or they have to leave)

Charles Boyer reverts to his gigolo playbook and use of his bedroom eyes in order to get across the US border by seducing school mom Olivia DeHavilland in Hold Back the Dawn. While the chaotic mess that is the border these days may only require good aquatic abilities, the more orderly 1941, could leave folks at bay waiting to get in for years.

Rumanian Georges Iscovescu is jolted by the fact it will take 8 years for him to gain asylum in the US due to a quota system. Taking up residence in a Tijuana hotel he impatiently waits his turn when he finds out an American wife will gain him entry. On July 4th he sets out in search of a wife and after a comically failed first attempt comes upon schoolteacher Emmy Brown, turns on the charm and soon hitched. Georges has no intention of staying with her once over the border and an American agent (Walter Abel) sees through the scheme.

Boyer is an ideal suave sleaze as he manipulates the naive Olivia, a sweet comic innocent that is almost too gullible. The romantic close-ups the two share are moments of incredible pang and passion given edge by Boyer's craven exploitation of the doe eyed sap. Paulette Goddard as a gold digging former dance partner adds a fine supporting performance as she deviously works all matters to her advantage.

Written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder with their noted cynical sense of humor it projects a type of screwball melodrama that brings a touch of unevenness to some moments, necessary, however, to pave the way to Boyer's redemption, along with a dig or two about US immigration laws.

Overlong melodrama with characters that are either unlikeable or bland. This easily could have been a half-an-hour shorter, but I'm not sure that would have helped. The scenes away from the little town (where most of the "action" takes place) are the best. Boyer is actually too good as the scoundrel; I was uncomfortable watching many of the scenes in which he pretended to be honorable. Finally, the ending is contrived in a way that subverts the overall big-budget style of the film. With a good scriptwriter, the elements that highlighted the immigration issues and longing for a better life would have lifted this movie into a more rarified stratosphere, but alas, that was not to be.