分类:爱情片 地区:美国年份:1941
主演:查尔斯·博耶,奥利维娅·德哈维兰,宝莲·高黛,维克托·弗兰森
导演:米切尔·莱森
更新:2023-05-08 15:39
简介:乔治(查尔斯·博耶饰)是一位罗马尼亚血统的法国人,他在墨西..乔治(查尔斯·博耶饰)是一位罗马尼亚血统的法国人,他在墨西哥卖掉自己的身体以赚钱养活自己。乔治最大的梦想是有一天去美国,获得美国公民身份,摆脱悲伤的过去。为此,他做了周密的计划。乔治决定找一个美国女人结婚,这样他才能顺利成为美国人,然后把这个可怜的女人踢开,然后去接他真正爱的女人安妮塔(波莱特·戈达德饰)。 ) 来美国和我们一起生活。虽然她不愿意将自己的爱人交给懦弱懦弱的人,或者愿意做奴隶或附庸,但安妮塔知道,如果她想得到什么,就必须先给予一些东西。很快,乔治在美国遇到了一位名叫艾米(奥利维亚·德哈维兰饰)的女人。 From the propaganda mill of Tinseltown, Mitchell Leisen’s HOLD BACK THE DAWN unashamedly posits USA as the ultimate safe haven for the war-ridden continental Caucasians, impeded by the quota number foisted upon each country, those wannabe-immigrants languish in the Esperanza Hotel at the Mexican border, waiting for their visa being granted, which could take years, torn by the so-near-yet-so-far anguish but there is nothing else they can do but waiting. Yet that is not the case for Georges Iscovescu (Boyer), a gigolo with Romanian extraction, all he needs is to marry a wide-eyed American girl from whom he can subsequently divorce once he lands his feet on the Land of Freedom.
Said eligible girls are at a premium on this side of the border, once Georges sets his eyes on the demure schoolteacher Emmy Brown (de Havilland), he knows he has found the perfect prey, and he has only one night to charm her into wedlock, he manages to do that through plausible blandishments, his requisite survival skills which he has been practicing from one skirt to another in another continent, and a corn-fed simpleton like Emmy has no immunity to his effusive, exotic affection, she is swooned with glee and is reborn as a newly-wed totally overwhelmed by the whirlpool of romance, her naivety is achingly touching watched by spectators in the know, with the tingling anticipation of the earth-shattering moment that will dash her reveries and crash her to the core, meanwhile hoping Georges will have a change in his cold heart, after all, Emmy represents the paradigm of an American wife, a merchandise catering for all men whose path have been lead astray, here is your chance to turn on a new leaf of your sorry life!
Ms. de Havilland is as per usual, a virtuous ingenué has no single morsel of vice in her chromosomes, and arrestingly holds court when she gracefully nails the clincher by swallowing the hard truth but also admitting her own inanity in this “it takes two to tango” flimflam, a second Oscar nomination is a sublime payoff. Mr. Boyer, whose Janus-faced fickleness, which would be canalized into great terror in George Cukor’s GASLIGHT (1944), only intrigues us for half of the movie’s length as it is superseded by a hangdog impression after his conscience gradually catches up with him. Also top billed, Paulette Goddard’s Anita Dixon, Georges’ former dancing partner, fares less eloquent as the brazen gold-digger who has to take on the ignoble job of dishing the dirt out of petty jealousy, then, there is always Walter Abel’s dogged, brisk Inspector Hammock, who dutifully fishes for unholy unions on the scorching turf, and a snippet about the pregnant Ms. Kurz (DeCamp) laboriously tries and succeeds in going into labor on the USA territory, so that the newborn infant can be born as a natural American citizen comes as a bittersweet divertissement and underlines the quagmire of a larger picture.
While the movie does lose some zest and credibility in the latter stage when the narrative hastens toward a contrived happy ending (yes, dictating your story to a Hollywood filmmaker to get some quick cash is not just lazy but desperate writing, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder are the scribes no less!), HOLD BACK THE DAWN is at any rate, a highly watchable melodrama with a romantic spin angling for those of soft-centered persuasion.
referential entries: George Cukor’s GASLIGHT (1944, 7.2/10); John Huston’s IN THIS OUR LIFE (1942, 6.8/10).
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