Olivia de Havilland, Hold Back the Dawn

as EMMY BROWN

It seems as though Olivia de Havilland's work in Hold Back the Dawn is primarily associated with being the nominated performance to which she was pitted against Joan Fontaine in an epic SISTER VS. SISTER showdown, and not as much is written about the actual performance itself. And perhaps rightfully so. After having recently rewatched Gone with the Wind, I found myself supremely impressed by the warm veritas of de Havilland's Melanie Hamilton, much more so than on my very first watch years ago. Her role as Emmy here in Hold Back the Dawn is pretty much in the same vein as that of Melanie, and I mean that as both a good and a bad thing.

For starters, I'll say that I think de Havilland is an impeccably warm and hospitable presence. She underscores Emmy with a sweet naiveté that made me care for her as well as fear for her impending heartbreak once Charles Boyer's secrets are inevitably revealed. Much like her work in Gone with the Wind, de Havilland has a knack for using her softness to make herself captivating, and she certainly does so here. But there is something so desperately lacking to this performance in comparison to her Melanie, and I feel that it has to do with de Havilland being hampered down by her script. Emmy isn't given a lead character-treatment (had this been in the supporting category I'd probably be more impressed) and thus the role itself is too thin for my liking. de Havilland is far too intelligent an actress to successfully pull off the notion (not that she even tries) that she would be so gullible as to fall for and marry a foreigner within a day of meeting him (on a tangent, WTF is it with old movies and people excitedly proclaiming their love for each other/marrying each other after having known each other for day or two?). The character is rather one-dimensional, calling for a lot of awestruck and glazed facial reaction shots to reinforce this idea that Emmy is an innocent and naïve woman, with not much else to show. And it doesn't seem like de Havilland is up for the challenge of digging deeply into the character to layer her with something other than blatant awe. Thus, this performance felt like it wanted to be another Melanie Hamilton, but just without the benefit of more screen time and better characterization. Save for a solid scene with Paulette Goddard and the resulting follow-up scene with Boyer and Walter Abel, I found Emmy to be too much of a simple person (warm as she is) to truly, connect to. It's a character archetype I've seen numerous times by now--that of the very loving, very kind girlfriend or wife--but unfortunately I don't think de Havilland brings anything to the table here that I haven't seen before from countless other ladies.

Another big fat THANK YOU to Alex in Movieland for hooking me up with this movie :)
(Now please get back to blogging ASAP so I don't feel so dreadfully alone in doing all this)