Gilda
— A gorgeous Rita Hayworth totally owns this tight, noirish drama and you end up forgiving her for the silly happy ending.”

- Director: Charles Vidor
- United States, 1946

Despite being one of noir’s unlikelier icons, Rita Hayworth seems to have cornered the market in breezy gals with something to hide and in Gilda she does a roaring trade.
For this is indeed a movie of contrasts: it’s a dark, claustrophobic tale played out in a lavish Buenos Aires gambling joint; it’s about the intrigue of secretive Europeans and postwar paranoia in a wide open region that never saw battle. And into this twitchy scene – in which the gamblers watch the joint, the joint watches the monopoly cranks and the police watch everyone – steps all-American Hayworth who, whilst hiding a troubled past, sparkles like a firework that sets the whole thing alight.
If there’s one anomaly, it’s the anti-noir happy ending, in which Glenn Ford’s downbeat Johnny Farrell skips off into the sunset with a suddenly unfettered Gilda. Yet it is just about forgivable, since without their mutual past and their mutual desire, the central tension of the plot – built as it is around these two contrasting characters – could never be so convincing.
See also:
Ocean’s Thirteen
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- Originally published: 9 Jul 2007 in Film
Sea of Love
A streetwise city cop thriller that crawls familiar kerbs but more or less delivers the package.
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The End of the Affair
Greene’s quirky take on the silent suffering of the English middle class.
- Originally published: 17 Jan 2010 in Books
Making a song and dance about it
A bizarrely comedic take on this weepy monochrome classic.
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Don’t Look Now
Has much in common with European cinema. Beautiful images and heavy symbolism but rather cold at its core.
- Originally published: 19 Apr 2007 in Film
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Hello you, I'm Mike Padgett. I'm not a Princeton curator, Knoxville mayoral candidate, Kentuckian pastor or Arizona journalist, I just share the same name. In fact, I am a consultant working in user experience and information design.
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I'm originally from Yorkshire, England but nowadays I live in Belgium. My current favourite Belgian beer is Black Albert.
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