Back to the Feature: Gilda (1946)

Everybody knows the iconic shot from Gilda: Rita Hayworth popping into frame by tossing her head back, her gorgeous flowing hair flying and resting on bare shoulders as she looks alluringly just off camera in a perfect display of feminine glamour and sexuality. “Gilda, are you decent?” asks her husband -her reply is a wicked and sensual “Me?”, before noticing he’s not alone and adjusting her composure. I must have seen this shot a dozen times watching The Shawshank Redemption over the years, its’ had an immortality, notorious both for typifying the classic Hollywood pin-up and being just an anomaly of movie sexiness at a time when that wasn’t generally permitted. Gilda was taken to task by the censors in 1946 for more than just this shot. A black strapless gown that she wears while performing “Put the Blame on Mame” late in the film caused some consternation as well -as did many elements of the films’ plot, which sees her being -or at least acting- sexually promiscuous around numerous men while married. This wasn’t new territory for the film noir of course, but what was objectionable was how she was given dimension in this, and how she was depicted with unusual sympathy for a femme fatale. Nothing about her behaviour, her flirtatiousness feels threatening -it’s rather charming, and one might even say, empowering.

Gilda is one of the most important films of the early noir period, directed by Charles Vidor at Columbia with in all likelihood the direct intention of being a vehicle for Hayworth, hence why she’s so front and centre in a way other women in noirs weren’t. In some ways I suspect the film was written around the Gilda character, a precise personification of Hayworth’s identity as a sex symbol -an image Hollywood really cared about given how much they had worked to transform the dark-haired and complexioned Spanish Rita Cansino into the redheaded all-American Rita Hayworth (they even had electro-stylists reposition her hairline). This film was in many ways the apex of that. And yet for showcasing a deeply cultivated, deeply fabricated persona, it’s more of an honest, authentically and provokingly liberal movie than many a studio feature of the time. For the most part anyway -we will get to the ending!

The film is set in Buenos Aires, and in a manner not unlike Casablanca, in a casino nightclub; dealing with the affairs of gangsters and gamblers and cheats. Gilda happens to be the new wife of the local American kingpin Mundson (George Macready), and by coincidence also has a prior relationship with his recently hired manager Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) -a fellow expat fond of using loaded dice who convinced the mobster to employ him. It’s not entirely clear the exact nature of his former relationship with Gilda -though most likely it was a failed romance, and the two make clear in multiple scenes how much they loathe each other, though in a very Benedick and Beatrice kind of way that reveals more buried emotions -albeit without the fun of Benedick and Beatrice. Gilda it seems is living her best life though, going out with numerous men she meets at the club behind her husbands’ back to Johnny’s fury -making a point of it in fact because it gets a rise out of him. This brazen infidelity on her part becomes arguably the chief source of conflict between these two and it’s quite interesting.

The Hays Code was adamantly rigid about the manner in which adultery was depicted in movies. It had to be shown as unambiguously immoral and sinful and deviant, and the committers had to be punished in some way by the end of the movie. But there were ways to get around this. Gilda kind of cheats by offering a ridiculous explanation late in the film that doesn’t quite hold water (and probably raised more than a few eyebrows at the Production Code offices), yet is just enough that the movie can depict her as seemingly enjoying herself in her flirtations and open sexuality. And this is key to the movies’ appeal.

Gilda as a character is wonderfully free. Her husband doesn’t seem to pay much attention to what she does, so she’s allowed to be sexy, alluring, clever, confident, and witty. There are a number of moments in the film that are still just as exciting as they were in 1946, where Hayworth delights in a smooth remark or in making a sharp expression, or in just putting such enthusiasm into a moment of cunning banter. She is a joy to watch and you take in as much joy as she does in the frustrations and the hate-on she provokes in Johnny. Because Johnny is in some ways an avatar for the Production Code or just the greater system of conservative censorship that dominated so much of pop culture at that time. He angrily and brutally tries to police Gilda’s sexuality, he resents her attractiveness and her embrace of it. In general he is just exceptionally concerned with repressing her, forcing her into the ideal of what a loyal mob wife and post-World War II married woman ought to be. Johnny is our protagonist and our point-of-view character (he gets the standard film noir narration, complete with dour superlatives), but he’s not a character it’s all that possible to like. Glenn Ford’s got none of the romantic charisma of Humphrey Bogart nor the captivating elusiveness of Robert Mitchum. But he’s one hell of a tough guy, and anyone who’s seen The Big Heat knows he’s very good at playing brutal, amoral antiheroes. That’s who Johnny is, and he’s often quite an unpleasant guy, the movie in this seemingly flipping the switch on the usual film noir formula.

That’s not to say the movie is necessarily an intentional critique of rank misogyny and toxic masculinity. Such topics as we know them likely wouldn’t have been front of mind in those days. And Gilda is framed as overzealous, maybe a bit spiteful, and implicitly motivated mostly out of conflicted emotions towards Johnny. After the apparent suicide of Mundson, it doesn’t take her long to agree to marry Johnny. But while she may be “corrupted” in a certain sense, she has our empathy -she’s vulnerable and she’s earnest, something Johnny never is. And we see this most starkly in their marriage, revealed to be a sadistic mechanism of righteous punishment from Johnny, who traps her in a state of constant surveillance by mafia goons while neglecting her himself, and even torments her psychologically by obstructing her every escape. At a point it takes on the feel of a captive horror movie as seen from the perspective of the captor. It’s harrowing! Johnny’s menace and cruelty is impossible to overlook, his power over Gilda reprehensible. And Ford doesn’t show remorse -in fact it gives him pleasure. There’s a lot to dissect in this treatment, but the limited movement of Gilda specifically and her restrained behaviour certainly lends credence to a metaphor pertaining to Hollywood standards. She cannot exist as a symbol of desire, and when she does manage to break through in that late, slick performance of “Put the Blame on Mame” (wherein we see the pride of her old self), it feels genuinely revolutionary and cathartic -especially in that boldness of her open defiance right in front of Johnny. That has aged well!

The ending on the other hand has not, though it is curious in how literally it epitomizes the grip of the Production Code. I think Vidor and the writers consciously opted to make it as hackneyed and preposterous as possible to emphasize how forced on them it was. Johnny finds out that Gilda never committed adultery after all -it was just an act; and he decides that he really does love her and they reconcile, thereby removing any moral breach on her part and giving Johnny a late-film attempt at a romantic lead makeover. However, he still has to be cleared of his moral transgressions as the boss of a major gambling racket. So his old boss Mundson comes back from the dead (he faked his death for no reason) to exact vengeance on both Johnny and Gilda, only to be quickly killed by the bartender and for an agent Obregon (Joseph Calleia looking like a Maltese Ronald Colman) who’d been tailing Johnny for much of the film to let him go in exchange for documents incriminating Mundson as the sole mastermind. Johnny forfeits the criminal business and runs off with Gilda putting them in the clear as far as the censors are concerned. All this takes place in the last ten minutes of the film -less even. It is bewilderingly rushed, highly inauthentic yet over-the-top, and almost certainly exists just to cover up any grayness. Ironically in confirming Gilda’s fidelity it makes Johnny look even more abusive, and we’re just supposed to infer he’s not going to abuse her anymore because he’s nice now and technically not a criminal. The ending seemingly goes against every theme of the film up to that point, though I don’t see it as ruinous as much as badly fascinating in how quickly everything has to turn around to be acceptable. In its’ own way it’s just as damning of the censors as the commentary around Johnny.

Also it’s just really beautiful. Baz Luhrman on the Criterion Channel compared it to Casablanca in its’ romantic exoticism -and in spite of it obviously being shot in Hollywood with few actual South American actors, it somehow does get across that impression of an attractive foreign world. The production design is really interesting, but what I think sells this idea most successfully is the cinematography by Rudolph Maté, which itself is fairly outstanding when you compare to other film noirs -warm and pretty and with a particular stylishness to how he works with lighting. One scene in which Gilda is mostly in shadow talking to Johnny is astoundingly evocative, and seems to encapsulate the purest look of noir. Vidor’s direction is also worth acknowledging, especially for someone not as revered as his contemporaries (that other Vidor working in Hollywood during the same time for example). He directs his actors fabulously, and seems to know exactly what he wants from each scene, not afraid to be subversive. Which is exactly where this movie shines best.

The plot of Gilda isn’t what it’s remembered for, but a part of me thinks it should be. Watching it now it feels more provocative, it reads as a more nuanced discussion of feminine sexuality and toxic masculinity, much as the ending may try to undo such things. Obviously it’ll forever be the movie most associated with the image of Rita Hayworth, and for film fans its’ technical qualities will always be noteworthy. But I think it’s also pretty shrewd and thematically compelling, worth its’ reputation in new and evolving ways. Gilda most certainly is decent.

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