‘Gilda‘ was one of the great hits of the 1946 film year. It was screened at the first Cannes Film Festival and even had an atomic bomb named after it (or after it, to be exact). The director of the film was Charles (Karoly) Vidor, one of the Hungarian-born filmmakers who came to Hollywood in the first half of the 20th century and contributed immensely to the progress of the film industry and the formation of the taste of the American and international public. If we agree with the opinion that a film, like any other work of art, is a dialogue between the artistic object and its consumer, then even if the images and sound of ‘Gilda‘ have remained the same, the viewers are completely different, several generations after their grandparents or great-grandparents saw this movie. So what does the new ‘Gilda‘ tell us, the spectators of the year 2020?
The characters and the style of filming, belong to the film noir genre. As in the classic ‘Casablanca‘, the main characters are two men and a woman who meet in a luxurious place (an illegal casino in this case) far from the United States (Buenos Aires in this case). As in Michael Curtiz‘s film, the thriller plot (speculative and illegal tungsten trade during and after World War II) is of secondary importance. The screenwriters’ and the director’s attention is focused on the relationships of the love triangle formed by the charming crook Johnny Farrell (played by Glenn Ford), his friend and boss Ballin Mundson (played by George Macready) and his fascinating wife (played by the formidable Rita Hayworth), the woman who brings the history of a past affair with Johnny between the two men. The police intrigue is trivial and smells more of a pretext. On the other hand, the love and hate story between Gilda and Johnny has a strong and modern ambiguity.
Rita Hayworth is fascinating. Her magnetism, beauty and her dramatic and vocal qualities (although in some of the songs her voice is doubled by that of Anita Ellis) make so that not only the men in the movie but also the whole film revolves around her. This fascination has stood the test of time. Her character has consistency and is revealed to the viewer gradually, gaining empathy and justifying herself psychologically and morally. Glenn Ford matches her in a charming role, which remains a psychological mystery. Inserting off-screen voice does not help. What determines his attitude towards Gilda? Devotion to the boss-friend who saved his life, or maybe it’s an allusion to a homoerotic relationship at a time when the subject was still taboo in Hollywood? It is one of the timid darings of the film that was forced to abide by the Hollywood codes of 1946. And yet, I think that the audiences then understood at least as much as today, and here lies part of the secret of the house success of film at the time. Today, if a remake were made, it would probably be a violent film full of explicit eroticism. But it wouldn’t necessarily be a better movie.