To introduce Gilda (1946) at the Balboa Theater on Thursday, NoirCity founder Eddie Muller offered a familiar interpretation of the film: its protagonist (Glenn Ford as Johnny Farrell), like its director (Charles Vidor), is confused about his sexuality. Now, we've always found this reading a little juvenile, and a little too easy--most film noir, after all, is about homoerotic relationships (see also: cowboy movies) and the beautiful, dangerous women who threaten them. In this setting, though, it was worse than lazy criticism: it produced that most annoying feature of the art-house moviegoing experience, the inside joke. You know this one: whenever something they've been told to watch for happens, moviegoers (clad, again, in fedoras--these must be the same people who wore tutus to the ballet when they were younger) laugh nervously, not because they're amused but because they get it.
Happily, what took place on the screen made up for anything that could possibly have happened in the theatre. First, the sold-out house (on a Thursday! A 9:30 show! Of a film made in 1946!) was treated to a preview for Baby Face, which was reviewed here this summer and which plays at the Balboa, along with another Stanwyck vehicle, Night Nurse, Feburary 3-9. Then, we got a truly bizarre Tex Avery cartoon, "Who Killed Who?", set in a haunted house full of cross-dressing ghosts and a pissed-off Santa Claus (really). Then, Gilda.
Ah, Gilda. Towards the end of Gilda, Rita Hayworth (in the title role) sings, and performs a striptease to, "Put the Blame on Mame." During the striptease, she removes . . . one glove. It is quite easily the sexiest thing ever captured on film, and seeing it Thursday we realized what the image at the top of this post confirms: Rita Hayworth is Jessica Rabbit, only she's real. In one of those bits of Hollywood ephemera too good not to reproduce here, Hayworth is reported to have said, "Every man I knew had fallen in love with Gilda and wakened with me."
Eddie Muller had one thing right (aside from, you know, spearheading an excellent festival like he does every year and concluding it with a beautiful, funny, stylish film like this one): Gilda is about sexuality implied. At several points, Gilda suggests some sexcapade or another that she's performed, but she wins in the end, overcoming the convention that demanded Hollywood movies punish transgression and especially adultery, because, well, she's been teasing the film's characters along with its audience. NoirCity is over for the year, but Gilda is still available on DVD. There's plenty of classic Hollywood playing on Bay Area big screens in the coming months, though--if you believe, like we do, that they don't make 'em like they used to, go find it.
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