Gilda
Screening: 14 October 2002
Sponsored and introduced by Harry Patterson
USA 1946
104 minutes
Directed by Charles Vidor
Leading players - Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready.
Synopsis
Produced by Columbia, Charles Vidor directing, an absolutely marvellous example of cinema noir. And what do we mean by that? A range of melodramas, usually taking place in a city environment. Bleak city fall of menace and foreboding. Hard-faced men on the run, suits, fedora hats, the ladies usually brassy blondes, sometimes nice girls in trouble, helped out by anti-heroes, streetwise tough guys who are loners and always willing to take on the mister bigs.Gilda was different. Set in South America, a drifter, the great Glen Ford, after a street brawl, is taken on as a casino owners right hand man. He becomes involved with Gilda, the man’s young wife, having known her in the past. The villain, George Macready, an English character actor in Hollywood for years, is excellent.
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But it is Rita Hayworth as Gilda who steals the show. “There never was a woman like Gilda”, so said the advertising, but Rita looked upon it as a curse over the following years and a number of marriages. “They went to bed with Gilda”, she once said, “but they woke up with me”.A great high spot - Hayworth singing “Put the blame on Mame”. Dubbed, of course, but still a piece of cinema history.
Harry Patterson
