795 Gilda

[swo17]

Gilda



"Gilda, are you decent?" Rita Hayworth tosses her hair back and slyly responds, "Me?" in one of the great star entrances in movie history. Gilda, directed by Charles Vidor, features a sultry Hayworth in her most iconic role, as the much-lusted-after wife of a criminal kingpin (George Macready), as well as the former flame of his bitter henchman (Glenn Ford), and she drives them both mad with desire and jealousy. An ever-shifting battle of the sexes set on a Buenos Aires casino's glittering floor and in its shadowy back rooms, Gilda is among the most sensual of all Hollywood noirs.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2010 by film critic Richard Schickel
• New interview with film noir historian Eddie Muller
• Appreciation of Gilda from 2010 featuring filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Baz Luhrmann
• Rita Hayworth: The Columbia Lady, a 2000 featurette on Hayworth's career as an actor and dancer
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Sheila O’Malley

[flyonthewall2983]

Sadly, it doesn't come with a rock hammer.

[FrauBlucher]

This says 2k restoration. I wonder if that's a mistake. Everything coming from Sony/Columbia has been restored in 4k.

[YnEoS]

I was really hoping Criterion would knock it out of the park on the extras for this one, but I'm not too optimistic from the look of things. Melvyn Stokes's BFI Film Classics book on the film is such a high watermark for what good contextualizing accompanying materials should be like. It covers all the creative personnel in detail and how they affected the final look of the film and does a good job of explaining its unique production history and place in film history. The film really deserves more than just re-using old special features and trotting out the usual noir experts. But who knows, maybe the essay and interview will be really long and well researched.

[domino harvey]

When I saw Eddie Muller this past weekend he mentioned he wasn't recording the interview for the film until this week, which is kind of interesting given that Criterion sits on so many titles waiting for extras to be produced but still announces films before their contents are even created. For a preview of his contribution, however, Muller called Gilda "the most perverse film Hollywood ever made"

[FrauBlucher]

Bluray.com

[PfR73]

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Rita Hayworth: The Columbia Lady, a 2000 featurette on Hayworth's career as an actor and dancer

Noticed that this special feature, which was on the original DVD, has disappeared from Criterion's website & is not listed in the blu-ray.com review.

[Ashirg]

Looks like it was replaced by Hollywood and the Stars: "The Odyssey of Rita Hayworth"

[FrauBlucher]

Beaver

[Drucker]

There are lots of comments made around here that once a film gets a home video release we stop talking about it, so I'm making a resolution this year to try to keep up with the new Criterion releases and really go through them. Up first is Gilda which absolutely blew me away.

Gushing about a Hollywood classic is probably unnecessary, but the movie constantly surprised me, left me smiling, or devastated me. For their part, the three leads were magnificent, especially Glenn Ford whom before tonight I wasn't crazy about (mostly knowing him from Jubal and 3:10 To Yuma, neither of which did much for me.) Here, his self-deprication and attitude are a superb centerpiece to a haunting performance.

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There are so many little, perfect things about the film. What I think I liked best was that the film didn't rely on the shock of revelations for effect. It's clear pretty early that Johnny and Gilda know each other. But rather than dwell on just how they know each other, that point is danced around, and the mystery about their relationship is all the more effective because of it. Like the film says, we are going to start anew with only futures, so why dwell on the past? While I'm no expert, it didn't exactly strike me as a film noir. The mysteries upon mysteries, where characters bury themselves deeper and deeper into a mess was really not apparent here. As Eddie Muller also points out, there is also really not a femme fatale here, either. The film perfectly shifts its focus from "what is the story here" to "how will these relationships turn out" and remains perfectly entertaining because of it.

Because the film doesn't rely on revelations to make its point, the viewer gets little surprises as well. When it became apparent to me that Ballin was evil, Johnny was still enthralled with him. The viewer gets to figure these things out for themselves, and it's effectively done. The surprises are not called out but become so obvious as to be impossible to miss, and we get the most possible mileage out of their mystery.

Stylistically their were many fine moments, but I'd say my favorite was Ballin appearing in total blackness after letting Gilda out, and Johnny being in light. At this point, Johnny thinks he is the one hiding the big mystery (his relationship with Gilda), and thinks he is protecting Ballin from possible pain. But while Johnny thinks he is keeping a secret, Ballin is evidently the one with far more mysteries up his sleeve. Throughout the film, Ballin perfectly plays up the oblivious angle while clearly knowing far more than he lets on.

Lastly, lots of great little one liners from Glenn Ford in the film, and my favorite touch was

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Gilda getting married dressed in all black.

The Scorsese/Luhrman appreciation piece was fine if nothing truly fantastic, but the Muller discussion was an early candidate for supplement of the year. He discusses an angle of the film that I'm sure is obvious to most, but I totally missed: the idea that the male relationships in the film have more than a few homosexual overtones. He ties his discussion of the film in with its production and development in a totally convincing way.

Sensational film, pretty good release.

[movielocke]

There are lots of comments made around here that once a film gets a home video release we stop talking about it, so I'm making a resolution this year to try to keep up with the new Criterion releases and really go through them. Up first is Gilda which absolutely blew me away.

i tried this resolution last year, for the same reason, and while I sadly failed to get comments up about every titled viewed, I managed a solid couple dozen such posts, glad to see I'm not the only one making an effort! Good luck.

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i remember thinking while watching Gilda a decade or so ago, that there was some gay tension in the film, but I wasn't sure if that was me just projecting contemporary approaches of reading onto the film, or subtext deliberately crafted in. Looking forward to seeing that supplement.

[Gregory]

Deliberately crafted in, I'd say. I haven't seen the Muller piece yet, so I don't know what he says but he's very likely familiar with Richard Dyer's essay on the film, published in the BFI book Women in Film Noir. Dyer explores that reading of the film a bit, arguing that there's much more to it than the way Ballen "picks up" Johnny and all the exchanged glances and innuendoes. He understands the film as (unsurprisingly for its time) portraying such a male relationship not only as sick and deviant but also following the common misconception that a homosexual relationship follows the dynamics of a heterosexual couple, with one of the men playing the part of the "female" of the couple.
He also quotes an article from earlier in the 1970s that reported that according to Glenn Ford, the homosexual angle was obvious to them as they were making the film and they conveyed the implications of the relationship through mood alone, never making anything explicit.

There is something twisted in the way the two rival "suitors" come together, bonding over their shared hatred of the woman they're both ostensibly pursuing. I'm trying to recall if there are other examples of that particular kind of triadic relationship explored much in other noirs of the era.

[Jonathan S]

[I haven't spoilered most of this, as it follows the last post's train of thought.]

I haven't seen Eddie Muller's video piece, and it's a long while since I read Richard's essay (he was my film tutor 35 years ago!), but besides the obvious symbolism and double-entendres, the other giveaway is that gay relationships then (more typically than now) cut across age and class, often taking the form of a wealthier older gent acting as "sugar daddy" and mentor to a rough/poor young guy. (An 86 year-old friend of mine happily attests to this!) That is of course exactly how it occurs in Gilda and even at the time it would have been apparent to those "in the know", though such structures also served as a mask for less sophisticated viewers, including presumably the censors.

It's also one of the ways - to take up Dyer's point - in which the two men follow the dynamics of many heterosexual relationships, though (even if George Macready isn't as "queeny" as, say, Clifton Webb in Laura and other noirs) it doesn't necessarily follow that the older, richer, more dominant man is playing the "male" role all the time! (Behind the Candelabra, set in a later period, also comes to mind...)

The first third of Gilda has always seemed to me the most homosexually charged, not least because it's otherwise difficult to account for Johnny's intense dislike and jealousy of Gilda,

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as the film delays so long its central revelation of their past history.

I suppose most regular cinemagoers would guess that but I find the homo-erotic intensity of the opening sequences so strong that, even though I've seen the film many times, I continue to "read" the first third just as I did the first time!

[Manny Karp]

The idea of remaking this film is abhorrent, but Colin Farrell is the spitting image of Glenn Ford here.

[guidedbyvoices]

Bought this in the last sale, first saw it on TCM last year, watched again last weekend. Such an odd film. I feel Rita's over the top hubba hubba moments are a bit goofy, but there's plenty of simmering heat everywhere else. I liked the extra narrated by Joesph Cotten - it was a fun way to do a biography thing of her but you get her telling some of the parts, and it's a neat retro show with lots of show biz hyperbole.

I have to say all the gay subtext went completely over my head in both viewings of the movie. While that extra goes a bit long, at first I thought he was reading too much into everything, but there are a few good examples he shows that do make it look more than just coincidence. Interesting stuff, and I'm interested to see it again to see the story told through that angle.

[senseabove]

In The Celluloid Closet, Russo says:

And although Glenn Ford remarked in an interview that he and George Macready "knew we were supposed to be playing homosexuals" in Gilda (1946), director Charles Vidor laughed, "Really? I didn't know those boys were supposed to be that way!"

Almost all the references to the quote I can find cite Russo as the source, save for one that cites Melvyn Stokes' BFI book on Gilda and summarizes that Ford said this in the 70s, which makes more sense save for the fact that a posthumous reply from Vidor, who died in 1959, is even harder to believe than Ford saying it in the 50s. Presumably its Ford recounting Vidor's reaction, but I'm curious of the context.

Anyone by chance have the BFI book and can share whether there's a footnote citing the actual source?

[bottlesofsmoke]

Stokes cites Russo, here is the passage and footnotes

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[senseabove]

Thanks so much, bottles!

Interesting—Russo's book does not specify the date of the interview in the original or revised editions that I can see, so now I'm curious where Stokes got the date.