A Romanian former escort, now a WWII refugee stranded in a Mexican border town, concocts a plot to marry a virginal American schoolteacher in order to gain entry into the United States. Scripted by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, the refugee character played by Charles Boyer may incorporate elements of Wilder’s own recent history. Infamously, however, this was the film that turned Wilder toward directing – not because of its many merits, but because of the alterations made to his script, which infuriated him. One can easily imagine how Mitchell Leisen, that master smoother, softened the script’s bitter tone. Leisen even opens the film self-reflexively: Boyer’s refugee illegally enters the Paramount studio lot, makes his way to a soundstage, and seeks out Leisen himself. Boyer recounts his story to Leisen, ostensibly as material for a film that we then see in flashback. In the border town, the only way to gain admission to the sole hotel – Esperanza – is to wait for someone to die. When a refugee hangs himself, Boyer moves in. An American school tour brings a group of heartless brats into town, supervised by a naïve and well-meaning teacher, played touchingly by Olivia de Havilland. From this point on, she becomes bait for Boyer’s scheme. Boyer is
no angel; he is the most manipulative continental man in Leisen’s cinema. Yet the seduction scenes are directed in such a way as for Boyer to appear sincere. The film oscillates between sincerity, sarcasm and darkness, offering an unusually honest depiction of the quota-based visa system. Despite an abundance of tracking shots, cinematographer Leo Tover sculpts one of the densest environments of entrapment and stagnation in Leisen’s cinema. The spaces are sealed and contained, and movement resembles that of animals in a large zoo, prowling through cages and slipping through cat flaps. When Leisen, in his cameo, attempts to intervene on the refugee’s behalf, a State Department official tells him, “You stick to directing motion pictures.” His ending – Boyer, broken but enlightened, walking against the crowd at the border – expresses a profound empathy, rooted in surrender.

Ehsan Khoshbakht