Gilda

A two-hour billboard for Rita Hayworth’s star power, Charles Vidor’s spectacular Gilda tells the story of Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford), an American conman in Buenos Aires who befriends and accepts a job with wealthy nightclub owner Ballin Mundson (George Macready). Unfortunately, Mundson soon announces he’s found a new wife: the gorgeous Gilda (Rita Hayworth) who, coincidentally, was once the love of Johnny’s life. The romantic tension is immediately palpable: Gilda’s carefree sex symbol image, especially while performing “Put the Blame on Mame,” contrasts starkly with her aching love for Johnny (“I hate you so much I think I’m gonna die from it”). Notable about Gilda is its story’s parallels to Hitchcock’s Notorious, another original screenplay produced and released in 1946: both involve an imposter in the home and marriage of a Nazi sympathizer in South America immediately following WWII, both center their schemes around a potentially lethal metal (uranium, tungsten), and both films feature a suppressed, love-hate passion between the two leads, or all three if you buy into the bi-sexual, three-way energy many have identified in Gilda. Vidor makes generous use of back lighting and silhouettes to highlight the characters’ inscrutability and inserts pre-Lenten Carnival festivities to foreshadow the coming period of repentance.