Gilda
- 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.
