Gilda [PG]

Johnny is a hardboiled American gambler in Argentina. A man who makes his own luck, his streak is broken one night when he is saved from a hold-up shooting by a suave, sword-cane wielding gentleman named Ballin Mundson. Johnny meets Mundson again at a classy casino that he owns and soon becomes his right-hand man. For a while the relationship goes well and life runs smooth for Johnny, until Ballin comes back from a trip with a wife: a beautiful and charming woman named Gilda whom Johnny has had the ‘pleasure’ of meeting in his past. Soon a love triangle begins to take shape and it’s only a matter of time before someone cracks with the tension. 

Rita Hayworth and this movie in particular have been the source of many intertextual references in popular culture. Madonna speaks about Rita in ‘Vogue’ and of course we’ve all seen the hair-tossing scene featured in The Shawshank Redemption, not to mention that King’s original title of the novella was Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. A film that has been the subject of acclaim and criticism, Gilda is an engaging and compelling piece of classic Hollywood cinema that can best be summed up by the character of Gilda herself: it plays teasingly with the audience, sparking excitement and plot direction and then either delivers or doesn’t. You might find yourself having to really look for what was making you get the tingles all over. It’s a good film. 

Johnny is a hardboiled American gambler in Argentina. A man who makes his own luck, his streak is broken one night when he is saved from a hold-up shooting by a suave, sword-cane wielding gentleman named Ballin Mundson. Johnny meets Mundson again at a classy casino that he owns and soon becomes hi’s right-hand man. For a while the relationship goes well and life runs smooth for Johnny, until Ballin comes back from a trip with a wife: a beautiful and charming woman named Gilda whom Johnny has had the ‘pleasure’ of meeting in his past. Soon a love triangle begins to take shape and it’s only a matter of time before someone cracks with the tension. 

I think that the most brilliant thing about this movie is that you can look at it from any angle and find something to comment upon. This is the cunning work of screenwriters Jo Elsinger and E. A. Ellington who have created a script that just offers hints of everything and holds off the real shocks and clinchers until the very end. Throughout this entire film you do have this feeling that there is something bigger lurking in the background, but of course it’s in the shadows so you can’t make out what it is and that curiosity and anticipation is what makes you tingle when the characters say or do something. Case in point, there are some nice juicy and slightly bitter hints at homosexuality surrounding the relationship between Ballin and Johnny and this could be further confirmed by their objectifying Gilda as something that Ballin has “bought” as well as Johnny’s misogynist quip, “statistics show there are more women in the world than anything else… except insects.” This ironic and cynically funny misogynistic vein continues within the character of Gilda herself being overtly feminine with her irresistible hair-toss, her ‘trouble with zippers’, and her signature tune ‘Put the Blame on Mame’: all culminating in this woman who is a portrait of the havoc that women are blamed for when men become besotted with them. As I mentioned before, the best way to describe the film is to really compare it with its leading lady: it’s charming, and plays with us teasingly, but never fallows through with the excitement sparked until right at the very end, keeping us all in our seats shivering with “antici…pation”. 

The performances are all memorable. Rita Hayworth as the woman herself is charming, charismatic, guarded, and can be quite dramatic when the situation demands. She’s truly a Glamazon in black and white and watching her on screen, I did feel like that girl in Singin’ In the Rain: “she’s so refined, I think I’ll kill myself.” 

Glenn Ford stars as Johnny and takes the idea of hardboiled to a whole new level. Although every flitter of hatred, loathing, jealousy, and every other feeling can be seen on his face, he travels through the film with a very cool and biting attitude, growing slowly until it comes to a head. Broadcaster, novelist, and critic, Kim Newman writes, “Ford and Hayworth, limited but engaging and photogenic actors, have definitive performances drawn out of them like teeth” and I can’t help but love this line. I think she’s hits the mark relatively well there because their performances are great together, but they do take a while to come out. And you can’t feel them progressing, but you know they are. 

Starring George Macready, Joseph Calleia, Steven Geray, Joe Sawyer, Gerald Mohr, Robert R. Scott, Ludwig Donath, and Donald Douglas, Gilda is a memorable Hollywood classic that teases and plays, but finally makes real good in the end. Filled with action, romance, drama, betrayal, plans for world domination, and some refreshing cynical comedy, I really enjoyed this film: more so when I go back and think about why I enjoyed it.