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| Plot Synopsis Columbia's lush and lavish film noir Gilda offers one of the strangest romantic triangles in any 1940s film. Played by Rita Hayworth in her considerable prime, Gilda is the sexy wife of mysterious, crippled casino owner George Macready. She is also the former love of gambler Glenn Ford, who takes a job as a croupier in Macready's Buenos Aires casino. Realizing that there is some sort of sexual tension between Hayworth and Ford, Macready goes out of his way to throw the two of them together by ordering Ford to act as Hayworth's bodyguard. One has the feeling throughout that Macready lusts after both Hayworth and Ford, all the while manipulating their downfall. In the film's most famous sequence, Hayworth defies both Ford and Macready by performing an overheated rendition of "Put the Blame on Mame" in front of the panting male casino customers. Ford continues to resists Hayworth's charms, but Macready, sensing that their affair has resumed, leaves in a fit of rage and is presumably killed in an airplane crash. Hayworth and Ford marry, but theirs in an abusive relationship due to Ford's inability to trust Hayworth and her supposed alley-cat behavior. At a crucial moment, Macready, who is not dead after all, returns to kill both Hayworth and Ford. But since Macready is not only a cuckold but a Nazi collaborator, it isn't hard to figure who's really going to end up sprawled on the floor. Perhaps a little too pretty and well-lit to totally succeed as melodrama, Gilda is nonetheless a superb showcase for Rita Hayworth-as well as a marvelous example of how a clever scriptwriter (Marion Parsonnet) could suggest all sorts of sexual aberrations while still remaining within the boundaries of the Production Code. - Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide Reviews LUCIA BOZZOLA All Movie Guide High Artistic Quality There never was a noir woman like Rita Hayworth in the title role of Charles Vidor's stylish Gilda (1946), the film that sealed her reputation as the leading 1940s love goddess. As the hair-tossing female caught between Glenn Ford's Johnny and George Macready's Ballen, Hayworth's Gilda is as much put-upon victim as temptress, an interloper in the relationship between Ballen and Johnny. Their initial meeting and master-servant relationship, sprinkled with significant glances, imply that Johnny is as much Ballen's object of desire as is Gilda, plumbing the literally shadowy depths of film noir's sexual perversity as much as the Production Code allowed, and adding an extra twist to the tortured Johnny-Gilda union after Ballen's faked death. Still, it is Gilda who suffers most for exuding the sexuality that entices Johnny and Ballen, lending a knowing edge to her famed performance of "Put the Blame on Mame" clad in lustrous black satin, suggesting a full striptease by removing a glove. That sequence became a signature star moment for Hayworth, and established Gilda as a noteworthy work of erotically charged film noir, despite the Code-friendly, good-girl ending. JEREMY HEILMAN Moviemartyr.com 11-10-02 * * * 1/2 Gilda is the film noir that's most notorious because it cemented the sex symbol status of its star Rita Hayworth, which is all the more impressive when looking at its sleazy environs. They seem more conducive to grit than glamour, but there's no denying Hayworth's presence in the titular role. Set in Argentina, this set-bound drama becomes in its second half a modern Rapunzel story, with its longhaired star locked in a prison of sexual frustration. It's to the star's credit that she never for a moment lets the audience forget about her carnal desires. She's oppressed by two men, each spurned on by his jealousy of the other, but her predicament doesn't elicit audience sympathy so much as frustration that she might be in love with one of them exclusively. Gilda is at her most sexual when she's asking a roomful of horny "gentlemen" to help her with zipper, even though the brain tells you there's a sick sort of pathos at work in the scene. With either of the men, she seems too restrained to really glow. The constraints of marriage cramp her style and that makes her dangerous. As an actress and a screen presence, Hayworth has a lot of love, and sex appeal, to give. For her to squander such riches on one suitor seems a tremendous waste. In most film noir, the underbelly of moral corruption is so undeniable that it becomes visible in the visual elements of the film and the behavior of the characters. Here, despite a subplot regarding a shady tungsten monopoly, that corruption stems precisely from Gilda's sexual potential. The dressed up, but still obviously artificial sets that the action unfolds on only reinforces the notion that Gilda's sexual freedom is only illusory. She's punished in the movie because she threatens to burst the lid off of the sensual repression. Charles Vidor's workmanlike direction is smart, but not smart enough to realize that it's Gilda's pathos that is the most interesting here. He gives us the perspective of a slick but shallow protagonist (Glenn Ford) instead of a more thorough examination of the biggest mystery in the movie (though the Production Code might have made a look at Gilda's motives impossible). Ford provides voiceover narration, and even though it's a staple in the genre, it feels especially turgid and obligatory here. To complain that Hayworth's co-stars don't exhibit as much energy as she does in Gilda seems almost absurd though. Her presence here is so indomitable that it's almost surprising that Vidor found it necessary to bother putting other actors on the screen at all. CHRISTOPHER NULL filmcritic.com RATING (out of 5) The definitive Rita Hayworth vehicle is this film, Gilda, her most famous film, shot when her career was beginning to slow down. Whether dancing, singing, or tempting a pair of men in an Argentine casino, Hayworth is a burning presence in ever scene -- every scene she's in, anyway. Hayworth is absent for the first 22 minutes of the movie, during which Charles Vidor sets up a plot about a troublesome gambler (Glenn Ford) who later enters into Gilda and her rich husband's life. Oh, and they have a past together, too. I could forget Ford, but Hawyworth deserves all the attention she gets throughout the film. |
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| GILDA 1946 - USA - 120 min. - Feature - B&W Director - Charles Vidor |
| Genre / Type - Drama, Film Noir, Romantic, Mystery Flags - Questionable for Children, Adult Situations, Violence MPAA Rating - NR Keywords - extramarital-affair, revenge, casino, gambling, gangster, jealousy, love, love-triangle, Nazism, romance, stripper, veteran [military], war, missing Themes - Femmes Fatales, Love Triangles, Haunted By the Past Tones - Sexy, Atmospheric, Moody, Enigmatic, Cynical, Stylized, Lavish Produced by - Columbia Pictures DVD Street Date - Nov 7, 2000 Cast Rita Hayworth -- Gilda Mundson Glenn Ford -- Johnny Farrell George Macready -- Ballin Mundson Joseph Calleia -- Obregon Steven Geray -- Uncle Pio Joe Sawyer -- Casey Gerald Mohr -- Capt. Delgado Robert Scott -- Gabe Evans Ludwig Donath -- German Donald Douglas -- Thomas Langford Lionel Royce -- German Agent S.Z. Martel -- Little Man George Lewis -- Huerta Rosa Rey -- Maria |
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