La puerta de oro

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.

One of the all-time great tearjerkers, this film satisfies on many levels: it offers a truly involving and emotionally moving story, an abundance of well-drawn and complex characters, an unusual setting, and three excellent stars (Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland, and Paulette Goddard). Boyer's character narrates much of the film, describing how he woos and weds sweet schoolteacher de Havilland in order to gain American citizenship, and this device allows us to listen in as his jaded, mercenary persona mellows and purifies under the influence of his innocent bride. Full of wry humor and a colorful supporting cast, this film deserves to be better known.

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.

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.