Gilda (1946)
Directed by Charles Vidor

Film Review

A torrid tale of desire, revenge and frustrated sexuality is the essence of this distinctive and highly provocative film noir, which features Rita Hayworth in a role that would transform her into a screen goddess.  It is hard to believe the film could have been made in Hollywood in the mid-1940s (when rigorous self-censorship was in force), such is the overt sexuality that Hayworth brings to the film in her startling portrayal of a guiltless, thoroughly liberated temptress.  Here, Hayworth stars alongside Glenn Ford, with whom she had previously worked on The Lady in Question (1940); they would form an effective duo in a further four films.   The film's most memorable sequence is the one in which Hayworth, at her sensual best in a stunning low-cut black gown, sings Put the blame on Mame whilst performing a dance that is suggestive of a striptease.  You have to go back to Greta Garbo's infamous dance in the pre-Production Code Mata Hari (1931) to find anything quite so flagrantly erotic as this in American cinema.

One of the defining features of the classic American film noir drama is an obsession with the darker side of human sexuality.  Gilda goes further than most and presents what is possibly the genre's most twisted, complex and downright sultry portrayal of a destructive male-female relationship.   The characters played by Hayworth and Ford live out a grotesque sadomasochistic ritual, in which love and hate are blurred to such an extent that the two passions become indistinguishable.  Matters are complicated further by the obvious homoerotic tensions between Ford's character and that played by George Macready, making this a decidedly bizarre ménage-à-trois in which each of the participants is more than willing to destroy the other two.  Although the film appears to end happily, you wonder what kind of future the two survivors of this Freudian angst-ridden nightmare could possibly look forward to.  One involving a swordstick and an awful lot of sticking plasters, presumably...

Film Synopsis

Not long after his arrival in Buenos Aires, crooked gambler Johnny Farrell is hired by the wealthy entrepreneur Ballin Mundson to work in his illicit casino.  When Mundson returns from a business trip, Johnny is surprised when he learns that his employer has married his former lover, Gilda.  Johnny still hasn't forgiven Gilda for walking out on him, so he uses his position to torment her.  She, in turn, provokes him by flirting with any eligible young man she meets.  When two Nazis appear unexpectedly and demand the return of the money they gave him during the war, Mundson kills one of them and stages his own suicide to evade arrest.  Johnny wastes no time in marrying Gilda, but soon realises he has made a terrible mistake...