Hold Back the Dawn (1941)
Hold Back the Dawn (1941)
Charles Boyer is a Romanian playboy stuck in Mexico while he tries to get a VISA to enter the United States a process which normally takes years. He runs into an old friend (Paulette Goddard) who tells him that she gained her U.S. citizenship by conning someone into to marrying her and later dumping him. In walks Olivia de Havilland (who received an Oscar nomination) playing a lonely (how?!) school teacher who’s taken her students on a field trip over the border into Mexico. So Boyer romances de Havilland as the means to his end. Walter Abel plays an immigration official who’s suspicious of Goddard and then Boyer’s motives. There is also a pregnant woman (Rosemary DeCamp) who also wants to get into the U.S. with whom Abel must deal. Directed by Michael Leisen and featuring an Oscar nominated Screenplay by Billy Wilder & Charles Brackett (The Lost Weekend (1945)) the film was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar as was its B&W Cinematography Art Direction-Interior Decoration and Score.