«I’m no past and all future, see? And I like it that way»: On Gilda (1946), its Past as a Regressive Noir Oddity & Future as a Reclaimed Queer Classic

Cinematekene er et samarbeid om felles digitale visninger på cinematekene i Bergen, Kristiansand, Lillehammer, Oslo, Stavanger, Tromsø og Trondheim. Montages setter fokus på filmene i utvalget gjennom ukentlige artikler. Charles Vidors klassiker Gilda (1946) vises fra og med torsdag 14. november  – sjekk tidspunkter i oversikten hos ditt cinematek.

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There’s film, and then there’s film noir.

That was the starry-eyed attitude of my teenage self, utterly besotted by the femmes fatales and, sure enough, by Bogey & His Wannabees (I include myself in the latter category). I memorised quotes from films that I hadn’t had a chance to see, and dreamt not of Hollywood but of its Golden Age (look, I didn’t know any better). Relatable and normal adolescent behaviour, I’m sure. To me, cinema was the only thing that mattered, and noir – well, it was its precious antimatter.

I maybe was just a little fanatic in my ardour, dressing up for highschool like a dame and blind as a Venetian to how very queer the genre (or, incidentally, I) was. The tainted world of noir dripped with allure – glamorous, twisted and sensual, it exposed the dark underbelly of conservative capitalist respectability. Its viscous pessimism clung sweetly to my alienation. Yes, even if the modernist anguish of 1940s America had little to do with the sorrows of this young Eastern European.

Noir, above all else, was restrained and classy. Yet somehow, along these cynical tales came Gilda (1946), a chaotic jewel that runs like a capricious whirlwind past any attempt to categorise it. Directed by Charles Vidor, produced by Virginia Van Upp (one of the very few female producers in Hollywood at the time), iconically costumed by Jean Louis and scripted from an adaptation by Marion Parsonnet, it really was a bizarre melange of everything the best (and worst) of Hollywood had to offer.

Crucially, it is also the queerest heterosexual film ever committed to celluloid (that is, it was until Gregg Araki snatched the medal with The Doom Generation (1995)). Yes, this supreme case study of the male gaze is, in fact, very, very gay.

A sophisticated melodrama, a venomous romcom, a subdued musical and, well, rather flighty for a political thriller – Gilda sustains multiple contradictions at its helm. You might already have teased out that this gorgeous noir is completely ridiculous. This particular exploration of sadistic cat-and-mouse games of post-WW2 sexual politics against the backdrop of Argentina’s transmutation into a Nazi haven excels in campy absurdity. And, boy, does it work – at least, all that managed to fly under the radar of censors.

It starts with Johnny (Glenn Ford), a ne’er-do-well grifter, getting rescued from an armed robbery in the nocturnal docks of Buenos Aires by Ballin (George Macready), a sophisticated gentleman with no business to cruise around such quarters (don’t worry, we’ll get into that). Ballin runs an illegal casino and Johnny soon becomes his enthused right-hand man. It’s the classic rags-to-riches tale and, to Johnny, it’s paradise: the three of them against the world, meaning Johnny, Ballin… and his little friend, the pointed walking cane with a concealed dagger that saved Johnny’s life, smiting right through his — and, safe to say, not only — heart that night.

Paradise is lost, however, when Gilda (Rita Hayworth, aka Margarita Carmen Cansino, in the most iconic role of her career) shows up to ruin it all. Gambling and women don’t mix – the two men had suggestively pledged before – but Ballin married her after a day’s acquaintance while travelling. A curious impulse for such a cold, calculating man. Johnny is not only burning up with jealousy, feeling understandably betrayed – Gilda and him happen to have a history together, and quite a nasty one, it seems.

We are never explained as to what that history might be, but it’s not difficult to guess why Gilda was disappointed with the relationship. The two rarely show anything else but contempt towards each other – and yet, out of illogical loyalty for Ballin, Johnny covers up for Gilda’s series of affairs with any handsome stud who enters the casino. You go, Gilda!

The cornerstone of Gilda is a battle of wits (and sex appeal) between Johnny and Gilda over Ballin’s attention – or that’s what Johnny thinks. Although, sorry to break it to you, but… you never stood a chance, old chap – not with the audiences, at least. Conspiracies, murders, explosions, deaths real and fake pile up – oh, the drama! It all topples nicely with the grimmest Hollywood ‘happy’ ending that I can recall: Johnny and Gilda run off into the sunset holding hands, presumably to ruin each other’s lives ever after. Not a spoiler, really – you didn’t think the censors would have allowed them all to get away with all that bisexuality and promiscuity now, did you? It was all just a big misunderstanding, really.

Much of the film takes place in the opulent labyrinthine casino, a vast space hidden behind mirrors that exists in parallel with only-hinted-at Buenos Aires. It’s a gilded cage where not a thing goes unsurveilled but, simultaneously, no clarity of perception can be found. The ambiguity of place and time of Gilda conjures up a mild but queasy fever dream – the casino provides a sight of an endless carnival minus the feeling of festivity.

It’s a fitting spatial expression of the maze of murky intentions and confused desires that this ménage à trois constantly squirms in. Only the casino employees are able to perceive where the melodrama lies. Perhaps because they actually leave for the outside world once their graveyard shift is over? Uncle Pio – casino’s bathroom attendant and singular decent person in the film – once sharply comments to Johnny, “One hears she [Gilda] is very beautiful. And very young and American. You are also young and American. It will be interesting to watch.”

As Rita Kaszás writes, this double entendre suggests a potential affair between Johnny and Gilda on the surface but also, enticingly, a rivalry. Nevertheless, a little rude of Pio – Johnny is not an awful-lookin’ fella, not at all, even if a little sullen and self-conscious about the growing pains of refashioning himself from a down-and-out crook into a refined sugar baby.

Ballin’s mansion, likewise, is just as much a beguiling snare as his high-class joint. The empty house chokes with luxury and Gilda is a counterweight to it – freshly imported to breathe life into the artifice of this overbearing place, the kind that only existed in Hollywood’s golden age. The atmosphere, like in many films noir, is clammy with foreboding and seduction. The danger only heightens the allure.

The world of Gilda comes into existence only at night, during the casino’s working hours: alcohol, lust and loathing all flow freely, blurring boundaries and sound judgements. What seems respectable is built on machinations, and what seems indecent is only a show. The illegal casino is where business and pleasure are meant to be mixed up, but Johnny struggles to distinguish proportions of his loyalties as an employee and as a lover. The categories all bleed into each other and he, filled with an inflated self-perception as the consort of this illicit palace, acts increasingly erratically (and misogynistically) to remain in power.

Johnny fails to understand that Gilda, unlike him, has no reverence for this stifling parade of wealth – otherwise, she wouldn’t act so carelessly. He eagerly gives up any aspirations to agency to serve Ballin (the things we do for love…), while Gilda is determined to exercise the misbehaviours allowed to the nouveau riche. Ballin, too, assumes she’s just like Johnny, as he tells her: “You’re a child, Gilda, a beautiful greedy child. And it amuses me to feed you beautiful things because you eat with so good an appetite.” Ah, what sweet nothings whispered by a newlywed. Makes my flesh crawl.

The two men project their own greed onto Gilda, but her appetite isn’t for money – it’s for the freedom that comes with it. And she, unlike Johnny, is very much aware of the rules of the game, and knows that all this shiny stuff isn’t class, so she has no obligation to act with class, either. Gilda retains social connections with the casino staff, since she knows she’s one of them, despite the more expensive uniform. She shares in their true perceptions of who’s chasing whom and for what reason. Johnny, on the other hand, remains oblivious to his position of a glorified paramour, and Gilda doesn’t fail to poke fun at him. Take the first conversation Gilda and Johnny exchange in private:

Johnny: You married him for his money.

Gilda: That happened to come with it.

Johnny: Now, that’s a great way to make a living.

Gilda: That wouldn’t be the big pot calling the little kettle black, now would it?

Johnny: I was down and out. He picked me up. Put me on my feet.

Gilda: Now isn’t that an amazing coincidence, Johnny. That’s practically the story of my life.

How did that get past the censors? Beats me. Self-awareness allows Gilda to glide, while Johnny is simply drowning.

Most of the dialogue in Gilda is deliciously taut, since each word uttered – and another implied – is a bid for power. And yet, Ballin is the one who actually holds it in this dysfunctional, er, polycule. He is an unscrupulous, dangerous criminal, after all. According to Jay Jacobson, he might be a sadistic one, too, which scares Gilda and turns Johnny on. Her retorts and escapades seem more like frantic grasps for sovereignty, rather than genuine expressions of an emancipated woman’s libido. Even if it all turns out to be a ruse (shoutout to the Hays Code here, which had to clear her reputation – or otherwise kill her, I guess).

It dawns on Gilda that she is cornered. With either of the two men succeeding in imposing more and more constraints on her, the gilded cage closes in and we gradually lose any sense of her exhilarating personality. Her character arc falls apart into incoherence towards the end, even if it’s where we – incidentally? – witness the musical performances that made cinematic history. In this regard Gilda is realistically cynical, revealing that a woman could only push against patriarchal mores so far before she had to be brought down, her hatred and rebellion miraculously transforming into love and civility.

So you might be wondering: how the hell did this steamy queer tale get released in the ‘40s, amidst Hollywood’s self-censorship which was only supposed to allow for a fraction of what was said about human nature in Gilda? Well, noir excelled in hiding queerness in plain sight. It practically invented queer coding with the use of visual innuendos (such as erect probing canes – not as subtle as dialogue), glances (watch Johnny and Ballin for reference) and,  less fortunately, dubious stereotypes (even creating some of the most lasting ones).

The queer villain stems from noir, even if it isn’t strictly the bread and butter of the genre. Ballin is certainly a queer villain and, I would argue, so is Johnny, even if he hides under the facade of a confused (read: abusive) hero.

You might think that, in the case of Gilda, I – together with every other critic in town – am stretching it with all this gay stuff. Vito Russo did write in The Celluloid Closet that, in an interview, Ford admitted that he and Macready were knowingly playing lovers. But I don’t care much for extradiegetic proof – the much more interesting evidence for me is that the plot does not make any sense otherwise. Which is why it was met with only lukewarm responses from the myopic American critics – the audiences loved it – who just didn’t know what to make of Gilda in the first place, apart from drooling hubba-hubba at Rita.

I hope that, given that general media representation has weaned itself off of the troubling remnants of noir legacy, I am allowed to reclaim my favourite genre rather than stuff it all back into the closet. I never fancied goody-goody representation anyway – in fact, the biggest drawback of Gilda is that her reputation gets “salvaged.” What I still love about noir is that its drama lies in the struggle to break out of the stifling normative path that has been designated for those ill-fitting their social standing, whether they be wives, queers or the poor. Maybe that was the magnetic force that worked its seductive charms on me in the first place.

I root for greedy noir misfits as they dare snatch what they want – even if the sweet smell of success they are chasing turns out to be noxious. At least they’re not interested in maintaining the status quo which, in my book, is a far more irredeemable sin. They lust after life and, to paraphrase Ballin, they make their own luck. What icons.

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Gabrielė Liepa (b. 1993) is a film & literature graduate from Amsterdam University College. Their interest focuses on arthouse, queer and/or Eastern European films. They are currently studying creative film production in Berlin.