Movie Monday: Gilda

 Movie Monday: Gilda

Released March 14, 1946 in New York City and nationwide a month later, Gilda is considered one of Hollywood’s best film noirs. The movie met with mixed reviews from critics, but most agreed that Rita Hayworth (in the title role) and Glenn Ford gave noteworthy performances. Audiences flocked to see it, and the movie earned almost $6M worldwide on a $2M budget.

Gilda was directed by Hungarian immigrant Charles Vidor who arrived in the U.S. in 1922 after having served in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. He initially worked as a basso for an opera company and eventually made his way to Hollywood where he secured an assistant’s job with director Alex Korda, another Hungarian immigrant. Vidor did well in the silent film era and came to the attention of executive at Universal Pictures after his success with the 1929 movie The Bridge.

The plot per imdb is “Just arrived in Argentina, small-time crooked gambler Johnny Farrell is saved from a gunman by sinister Ballin Mundson who later makes Johny his right-hand man. But their friendship based on a mutual lack of scruples is strained when Mundson returns from a trip with a wife, the supremely desirable Gilda, who Johnny once knew and learned to hate. The relationship of Johnny and Gilda, a battlefield of warring emotions, becomes even more bizarre after Mundson disappears.”

Gilda is actress Rita Hayworth’s first major dramatic role. By this time, she had already appeared in

dozens of films, but most were comedies or romantic comedies. The movie shot her Hollywood star even higher, but for Rita, there were drawbacks to being labeled a femme fatale. She was angered to learn her likeness was put on an atomic bomb being tests in the Marshall Islands alluding to her being a “bombshell.” Years later she commented that the men she dated “go to bed with Gilda but wake up with me.”

The film was also a big hit for Glenn Ford whose father had told him early on, “It’s alright for you to act, if you learn something else first. Be able to take a car apart and put it together. Be able to build a house, every bit of it. Then you’ll always have something.” The role was Ford’s first postwar film after having served in the Marines. He entered as a private and was promoted to sergeant before being medically discharged.

Even though Gilda was produced after the Hays code was implemented (“A set of industry guidelines for self-censorship of content applied to motions pictures.” Wikipedia), the movie pushed the envelope of acceptability with Hayworth’s attire (form-fitting black satin) and her “legendary one-glove striptease, “Put the Blame on Mame.””

Code “don’ts” include:

• Profanity
• Licentious or suggestive nudity – in fact or in silhouette
• Inferences to sexual perversion
• Illegal drug traffic
• Ridicule of clergy

Nominated for the grand prize at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival, Gilda didn’t receive any Academy Award nominations, however in 2013 was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Have you seen this classic?

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Shetland Sunset:

Bonded by a cause but an ocean apart, will their love survive a world war?

After months in Norway helping his cousins with their fishing business, American Askel Westgard seems trapped when the Germans invade until he has a chance to get back at the Occupiers as part of the Shetlandsgjengen, or Shetland gang, a group of fishermen who transport weapons and equipment from Shetland to Norway under cover of darkness. Unfortunately, the beautiful Norwegian woman he’s just met refuses to join him in safety. Will he ever see her again?

Distraught when the Germans overrun her beloved Norway, Tonje Bondevik refuses to take the occupation sitting down. She joins the fledgling resistance movement, deriving great satisfaction distributing the underground newspaper and performing acts of sabotage…until the day the Nazis come looking for her, and she must flee for her life. Perhaps she should have listened to the handsome Norwegian American when he offered to take her to Shetland.

Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/u/4AWqJk

 
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilda_(film)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038559/
https://www.criterion.com/films/27909-gilda
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/10460
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gilda
https://moviecrashcourse.com/2019/08/13/gilda-1946/

Photo Credits:

Movie Poster: By Robert Coburn - Scan via Heritage Auctions. Cropped from the original image., Public Domain.

Movie Still: By Columbia Pictures - DVD with the film & the trailer, Public Domain.

Movie Still: By Trailer distributed by Columbia Pictures - DVD with the film & the trailer, Public Domain.