Review:
Gilda
(Criterion Review #1)
Year: 1946
Director: Charles Vidor
"Gilda, are you decent?"
"Me?"
I wonder how many takes they did of that one shot before they got it right? It's so perfect yet so spontaneous that I'm drawn between a either a hundred or just one very, very lucky one. Probably neither is the answer, but Rita is so natural, so confident in her performance that you really do believe it was probably the latter. With a single hair flip and a one word line of dialogue, Ms. Hayworth cemented her place in cinematic history. That doesn't mean that the film itself earns it's place alongside her, however.
While Rita Hayworth certainly makes the movie what it is, and the rest of the cast do a fine job, this isn't quite a masterpiece of the film noir genre. This is mostly due to the fact (or, I suppose, opinion) that this is not really true noir. It may have the look and a few elements, but it's more just a drama, albeit an especially sleazy, seedy one. Hayworth is not a femme fatal in the classic sense, she's not evil in the end, just kind of a mess, as are all the characters, in their own ways. But getting back to the films quality, it's mostly fine brought up to higher heights by Hayworth's performance. There's some cool stuff, but it is by no means the classic it is sometimes regarded as.
Gilda is less the story about Gilda than it is of the two main male forces in her life: her husband and her ex-lover, and their own, rather serious, personal problems. Johnny (Glenn Ford) is a back alley gambler who is in the process of being mugged one night when he is rescued by a big time casino owner, Ballin (George Macready). Johnny is led to the casino and eventually hired, and after a little time, works his way up to the position of Ballin's right hand man. When Ballin takes a wife, it throws a wrench into their operation and betrays the strict rules they had put down for their business, chief among them "no women". To complicate things, this new wife of Ballin's is an old flame of Johnny's, a relationship that apparently didn't end very well. Things escalate with Gilda's increasingly risky behavior as Johnny tries to save the old man's pride. There's a faked suicide, people get killed, blah blah blah. I don't believe in the review as a plot summary, and I already feel I've given too much of that already,
What's really interesting in Gilda is the tensions and the relationships going on, particularly between Johnny and Ballin. The two have an inexplicable liking to one another, maybe because in Ballin Johnny sees the powerful man he'd like to be, and in Johnny Ballin sees... I'm not quite sure, possibly a remembrance of a younger him. What is obvious though is that Gilda is, for the most part, a kind of playing piece, reduced to an object by these two men's strange attraction for one another. I'm not necessarily insinuating homosexuality, because I don't believe it's there, but there is something to be said about Johnny's longing for the good old days between him, Ballin, and Ballin's "little friend" (a cane he carries with him wherever he goes, at least in the literal sense).
That being said, if Gilda is a playing piece, she is certainly not one that likes to be played with. She does whatever, says whatever, and "dances" with whomever the hell she wants. She's the most interesting character in the picture, and most of that is due to Rita Hayworth's incredibly sexy, spirited, suave and electric performance. My god is she good in this. Every gesture, every move is intoxicating. If she's on screen, your eyes don't leave her. She dominates with indomitable screen presence and charm in spades. It's her complete control over the situation in the beginning that eventually reveals itself to not be in her control, but in the hands of Johnny.
And that's where we get to what's really going on here. Gilda is a woman who is free in herself, who gets away with anything and everything, and to whom no one can tell her what to do. But that isn't the truth, as we discover that (spoiler alert) she only does what she does to make Johnny jealous, who she has been in love with all along. It's a twisted blend of hatred and lust that drives her, and eventually Johnny, to commit acts of emotional violence against each other, constantly attacking to see the other one brought to their knees in agony. That's the film in a nutshell, a male fantasy about bringing a strong willed, uncontainable, uncontrollable woman to her knees. Gilda goes from impossibly confident and in control to being trapped and helpless. Once the queen of her domain, now the prisoner of Johnny. And why is he doing this to her in the end? Because "if she wasn't faithful to him in life (oh yeah, Ballin faked his death, spoilers again), she'll be faithful to him in death". It's insane the loyalty to this man Johnny has.
It's a film about power. Throughout, the hands are constantly switching, the odds always in another's corner, much like gambling itself. The power fluctuates from one possessor to the other, always in the hands of those who abuse it in the end. It's pretty cynical, despite the happy ending, which really doesn't seem that happy when you think about it. I often have problems with the endings to movies like this, where it's obvious the couple walking off into the sunset are bound to destroy each other. It's pretty damn clear that Gilda and (especially) Johnny's borderline psychotic behavior can only end in misery, but it ends how it ends anyway. Blame Hollywood and their perpetual "happy endings".
While Rita Hayworth certainly makes the movie what it is, and the rest of the cast do a fine job, this isn't quite a masterpiece of the film noir genre. This is mostly due to the fact (or, I suppose, opinion) that this is not really true noir. It may have the look and a few elements, but it's more just a drama, albeit an especially sleazy, seedy one. Hayworth is not a femme fatal in the classic sense, she's not evil in the end, just kind of a mess, as are all the characters, in their own ways. But getting back to the films quality, it's mostly fine brought up to higher heights by Hayworth's performance. There's some cool stuff, but it is by no means the classic it is sometimes regarded as.
Gilda is less the story about Gilda than it is of the two main male forces in her life: her husband and her ex-lover, and their own, rather serious, personal problems. Johnny (Glenn Ford) is a back alley gambler who is in the process of being mugged one night when he is rescued by a big time casino owner, Ballin (George Macready). Johnny is led to the casino and eventually hired, and after a little time, works his way up to the position of Ballin's right hand man. When Ballin takes a wife, it throws a wrench into their operation and betrays the strict rules they had put down for their business, chief among them "no women". To complicate things, this new wife of Ballin's is an old flame of Johnny's, a relationship that apparently didn't end very well. Things escalate with Gilda's increasingly risky behavior as Johnny tries to save the old man's pride. There's a faked suicide, people get killed, blah blah blah. I don't believe in the review as a plot summary, and I already feel I've given too much of that already,
What's really interesting in Gilda is the tensions and the relationships going on, particularly between Johnny and Ballin. The two have an inexplicable liking to one another, maybe because in Ballin Johnny sees the powerful man he'd like to be, and in Johnny Ballin sees... I'm not quite sure, possibly a remembrance of a younger him. What is obvious though is that Gilda is, for the most part, a kind of playing piece, reduced to an object by these two men's strange attraction for one another. I'm not necessarily insinuating homosexuality, because I don't believe it's there, but there is something to be said about Johnny's longing for the good old days between him, Ballin, and Ballin's "little friend" (a cane he carries with him wherever he goes, at least in the literal sense).
That being said, if Gilda is a playing piece, she is certainly not one that likes to be played with. She does whatever, says whatever, and "dances" with whomever the hell she wants. She's the most interesting character in the picture, and most of that is due to Rita Hayworth's incredibly sexy, spirited, suave and electric performance. My god is she good in this. Every gesture, every move is intoxicating. If she's on screen, your eyes don't leave her. She dominates with indomitable screen presence and charm in spades. It's her complete control over the situation in the beginning that eventually reveals itself to not be in her control, but in the hands of Johnny.
And that's where we get to what's really going on here. Gilda is a woman who is free in herself, who gets away with anything and everything, and to whom no one can tell her what to do. But that isn't the truth, as we discover that (spoiler alert) she only does what she does to make Johnny jealous, who she has been in love with all along. It's a twisted blend of hatred and lust that drives her, and eventually Johnny, to commit acts of emotional violence against each other, constantly attacking to see the other one brought to their knees in agony. That's the film in a nutshell, a male fantasy about bringing a strong willed, uncontainable, uncontrollable woman to her knees. Gilda goes from impossibly confident and in control to being trapped and helpless. Once the queen of her domain, now the prisoner of Johnny. And why is he doing this to her in the end? Because "if she wasn't faithful to him in life (oh yeah, Ballin faked his death, spoilers again), she'll be faithful to him in death". It's insane the loyalty to this man Johnny has.
It's a film about power. Throughout, the hands are constantly switching, the odds always in another's corner, much like gambling itself. The power fluctuates from one possessor to the other, always in the hands of those who abuse it in the end. It's pretty cynical, despite the happy ending, which really doesn't seem that happy when you think about it. I often have problems with the endings to movies like this, where it's obvious the couple walking off into the sunset are bound to destroy each other. It's pretty damn clear that Gilda and (especially) Johnny's borderline psychotic behavior can only end in misery, but it ends how it ends anyway. Blame Hollywood and their perpetual "happy endings".
