Plot
Georges Iscovescu (Boyer) recounts his story to a Hollywood film director at Paramount. He is a Romanian-born gigolo who arrived in a Mexican border town seeking entry to the United States. He waits out the eight year waiting period with other hopeful immigrants in the Esperanza Hotel. After six months he is broke and unhappy. He runs into his former professional "dance partner" Anita Dixon (Goddard) who explains she obtained US residency by marrying an American, who she then quickly divorced.
Georges therefore seeks an American wife, soon targeting visiting school teacher Miss Emmy Brown (de Haviland). They marry the same day. Emmy unexpectedly returns a few days later, but immigration inspector Hammock (Abel) appears, hunting for con artists such as Georges. In order to evade Hammock, Georges drives Emmy to a small village, where they participate in romantic traditional rituals for newlyweds. Georges becomes increasingly bothered by his conscience as he sees how happy and unsuspecting Emmy is.
Iscovescu develops genuine affection for Emmy. However this jeopardizes the plans of Anita, long in love with Georges, for them to work together in the US. Anita informs Emmy of the entire scheme. Emmy does not turn him in when questioned by Hammock, but nevertheless leaves Georges. Returning to the US she is seriously injured in a car accident. A distraught Georges learns of this and jeopardizes his imminent US visa by illegally entering the country to go to Emmy. On hearing his voice she begins to emerge from her coma. Georges sees police arriving so leaves for Paramount, where Hammock catches up with him.
Some weeks later Hammock returns to the Border town. Anita has a new sugar daddy. Hammock tells Georges that he didn't report Georges illegal entry and his visa has been approved. In addition Emmy has recovered and is at the border to meet him. Georges sees Emmy happily waving to him from across the border and goes to meet her.
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“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
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—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)