Classic Movie Reviews: Gilda
By Josh Spiegel
May 8, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Unlike most film noirs, this one breaks a major trend with its ending. Up to that point, though, it's worth noting that Gilda is a fierce movie about three truly unlikable and morally confused characters. True, you may not want to spend that much time with people as prickly as these, but so few movies are willing to avoid the audience having a strong bond with its leads. That alone gets my praise. Hayworth plays, obviously, Gilda, a femme fatale who comes between the narrator of the film, Johnny Farrell, and the diabolical owner of a casino in Buenos Aires, Ballin Mundson. The strongest and most complex performance comes from Glenn Ford, as Farrell. As one of the harshest men to hold a grudge, someone who becomes too oddly devoted to Mundson, his employer, Farrell is a difficult character to sympathize with, and Ford helps add to the confusion. He's charming and charismatic, but distant and frosty, someone who you want to like but doesn't want to like you.
The story of Gilda starts out as we meet Farrell, a down-on-his-luck gambler who's about to be caught for ripping off a fellow player when the mysterious and menacing Mundson saves his life. Mundson, a casino owner with his hands in a few different pies, sees the beginning of a long relationship with Farrell, one that is far deeper than the ever-watchful Hayes Code that censored Hollywood movies from the 1930s to the 1960s would allow. We never see any particulars (and frankly, most movies these days would barely touch the storyline any further), but it seems more than clear that when Mundson offers Farrell the job of being his right-hand man, his main henchman, they're starting much more than just a working relationship. Within the first 15 minutes, we've seen these two men go from meeting each other in a darkened alley to being so close that they could probably read each other's thoughts.
And yet Mundson is a cruel man, someone who uses people and their feelings, and tosses them away when he no longer has a need for them. That's why he goes on a trip out of town and returns with his new wife, a woman named Gilda. Her entrance is one of the great moments in all of film, replayed in a scene from Shawshank; Hayworth, bending down, flips her head up to face Farrell and Mundson, letting her red hair fly and cementing her status as a star forever. Now, I bet I know what you're thinking. You're assuming that the rest of Gilda is about how Mundson and Farrell fight over Gilda, not just over her but over their own friendship. Of course, things couldn't be that simple. In a truly Dickensian twist (one that is very hard to swallow), we find out that Farrell's initial dislike of Gilda isn't just because he wants Mundson to himself...it's because Gilda and Farrell not only know each other from their past time in Argentina, but were once lovers. Don't you just hate when your ex-lover marries your casino boss employer? I can't stand that kind of thing.
What happens after the initial war of wills and words is how Farrell and Gilda deal with being in each other's life again. Farrell, knowing that Gilda has married Mundson, an older man, simply for his money, refuses Gilda any outside contact, especially with the many young men in and around Buenos Aires. Mundson vanishes around the second act of the film for various reasons, none of which serve any purpose aside from giving Farrell and Gilda a lot more face time, so we're given a sly if painful battle of the sexes, as Gilda knowingly goads Farrell by showing off the various himboes that she can bag around town, and Farrell becomes the least helpful wingman ever.
As unconventional it is and as unlikable as they may seem, this section of Gilda really worked a lot for me, mostly because it's so rare to see a movie that's meant to bring two lovestruck kids together spend so much time making them hate each other's guts. We're not talking about "hate," the kind of feeling that's really love with a bit of grouchiness; this is genuine hatred. Farrell doesn't so much hate Gilda as a person, he hates what she represents for his future and from his past. The same goes for Gilda, but this kind of hatred flies off the screen as Ford and Hayworth waste no time in making their feelings clear. When you think of some of the great film noirs, though, hate doesn't turn to pure love. Sometimes, hate turns into a grudging need for intimacy, sometimes it turns into heated passion, but never flat-out love.
Thus, we arrive at the third act of Gilda, where we're meant to buy Farrell and Gilda as star-crossed lovers, lovers who could get together if it weren't for his moral standards, his ill-fated ties to Mundson, and the ever-watchful eye of the police chief who knows that Mundson is up to something nefarious aside from fixing the roulette tables. Once they get together, it's appropriate for the way Hollywood movies worked in the older days: these two are the most attractive and charming people in the movie, so why shouldn't they get together? Ford and Hayworth certainly sell this part of the film as best they can, but the melancholy these two characters feel seems more realistic than the swooning vibes they give off in the final 30 minutes.
I mentioned Casablanca earlier, and in many ways, this movie wants very much to be an able successor of that film and, in doing so, fails miserably. Like the former film's protagonist, Johnny Farrell is an overseer of a boisterous club with customers of various backgrounds. Here, the second World War hovers like a specter, despite now having passed in the events of Gilda. Here, there are two lovers who once knew each other before meeting fatefully in the club. The main policeman in this film is corrupt, but not evil, and is more interested in helping out the protagonist than actually upholding the law. It's the ending, though, where Gilda and Casablanca diverge. The older film, of course, ends bittersweet, with those two lovers not getting together for the greater good. Gilda, however, ends with Johnny and Gilda getting together in one of the least convincing happy endings in movie history.
I'm not sure that the Hayes Code is to blame for this cheesy, sappy, and overly sentimental finale, but I'm quite sure that this ending helped make Gilda a movie known only for its sultry star, not because it's actually a movie worth remembering. Hayworth, to her credit, is quite good in her first major starring role. She makes Gilda a fierce and feisty woman; we know exactly why Mundson falls head over heels for her and we know exactly why Farrell can't stand her half the time. She's prone to some flights of fancy, her tone changes on the turn of a dime, but Gilda is at all times vivacious and entrancing; the lengthy scene where she sings "Put The Blame on Mame," slow and melancholy, is equally as memorable as her introduction scene.
Unfortunately, the most interesting character in the film is Mundson, and he steps away to the sidelines for the majority of the action. His real interest is helping out the fallen Nazis who survived the carnage of World War II, making sure they survive in Argentina as long as they help him control a tungsten monopoly. His interest in Gilda is, at best, carnal; however, with George Macready's purposely vague performance, you have to wonder if it even reaches that level. Mundson may very well be putting on appearances, realizing that his benefactors wouldn't be thrilled with the idea of this man gallivanting with another man. Mundson is not only selfish, he's vicious. In the first scene, he saves Johnny with the help of a cane that turns into a dagger, something he considers his first "friend." That leads me to the question that's never answered: who is this guy? What kind of issues does Ballin Mundson have? Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided to focus a little more on the other relationships he has as opposed to something close to an answer.
The movie that we get is intriguing and often baffling, never fully able to follow towards a logical conclusion. The logical finale isn't happy in Gilda, which really made the illogical happy ending more annoying. Why are these people getting a happy ending? Why do they deserve it? What makes them so much better, more moral than Mundson or any of the other characters in this movie? At the end of the day, Gilda should really be best known for missed opportunities and the fame Rita Hayworth never fully reached, as she remained typecast for the rest of her career as a bombshell. Oh, and for that infamous poster from Shawshank.