2009 AFI Dallas Film Festival - Gilda

(USA, 1946, 110 mins)
Digibeta
Directed By: Charles Vidor

Gilda with Rita Hayworth in the title role, also stars Glenn Ford as gambler Johnny and George Macready as the evil Ballin Mundsen, casino-owner and leader of some sort of Nazi-based tungsten cartel in Argentina, where the film mostly takes place.

But the plot really doesn’t matter much; what makes the film remarkable are the overtly homoerotic relationship of the two male leads (and Ballin’s “little friend,” a cane with a sword in it), the tortured and sadistic “love-hate” affair of Johnny and Gilda, and Rita Hayworth’s performance.

In Gilda, Hayworth combines the all-American forthrightness and humor of her wartime musical roles with the eroticism and power implied, if stereotypically, by her Spanish-Irish ancestry, and the effect is stunning. Hayworth’s strip-tease rendition of “Put the Blame on Mame”—an ironic commentary on how women are always blamed when the world goes wrong—is, in the words of its choreographer Jack Cole, “absolutely first-rate.”

Information from the festival's website