Irish Film Institute -GILDA

GILDA

Director: CHARLES VIDOR

110 minutes| U.S.A.| 1946| Black and White| D-Cinema


EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI

Packed with sexual ambiguities and famous for the sheer sensuality and wicked irony of Rita Hayworth’s nightclub routine (‘Put the Blame on Mame’, indeed!), this most pleasingly perverse crime thriller of the 1940s is re-released in a new digital version.

In wartime Buenos Aires, down-at-heel gambler Farrell (Glenn Ford) is rescued from assailants by German casino-proprietor Mundson (George Macready). Accepting a job as the joint’s manager, Farrell also becomes the boss’ closest companion, but is clearly put out when Mundson returns from a trip with a lovely wife, Gilda (Hayworth) – Farrell’s old flame, as it happens, which means that things get murderously complicated. Along with Rudolph Mate’s camerawork, the polished production design and a terse, knowing script, the typically charismatic performances of the three leads mark this out as a superior film noir, though what stick in the memory are the barely suppressed homoeroticism and the headily misogynistic fear and loathing to which Gilda responds in her deliciously defiant dance. (Notes by Geoff Andrew).

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