The Evening Star (June 11, 1946)
‘Gilda’s’ tempestuous love reaches screen at Earle
By Jay Carmody
No rational human expects the course of true love to be glassy smooth, but in the case of “Gilda,” which opened yesterday at the Earle, it turns out to be a succession of tidal waves. Why it never destroys Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford can only be explained by the fact that their durability is even greater than their passion. Both qualities are something highly special and Columbia Pictures, which made “Gilda,” is determined that is the judgment you will make of the screen drama. You almost certainly will. It has been a long time since so many handsomely dressed people became involved in so unpolished a romance for the delight of those who go to the movies.
In visualizing the heroine and hero of “Gilda,” the producers might well have thought back to Heathcliffe and Cathy of “Wuthering Heights.” In the dark violence of their natures, and the fatal attraction of their individual chemistries, they are not unlike Emily Bronte’s stormy lovers. But against the background of a modernistic gambling casino in Buenos Aires, their story does not earn the same passionate conviction as the one on the moors. Suspense and surprise, yes, but not the deep, inescapable feeling that this was what had to be.
Producer Virginia Van Upp, who started in the movies as a roly-poly child actress, has ordered all the stops pulled out in telling about Gilda and Johnny Farrell. Before the picture ends, the strain of the lovers’ emotions is destined to reduce them to a pulp and to the same emotions of the audience. That is pretty much the effect achieved by “Gilda,” except possibly in the case of hardy souls who make up their minds quickly that it is all too incredible.
The tone of the Earl’s fiery love story is akin to that which is called a deadly hush. The content of the dialogue is rich with explosive power, but the voice everyone uses is low pitched. Each word is fringed with the faint hiss of doom, as if the speaker might explode any second and kill everyone in the vicinity. The tension is rather expertly relieved from time to time with insets of sardonic humor, but only to heighten its effect when applied again.
In this respect, considerable artfulness went in to “Gilda,” to be credited most likely to director Charles Vidor.
Where Gilda and Johnny came from and how they first were fatally attracted to each other are never explained in “Gilda.” They are Americans in Buenos Aires, but why there, and how they came, remain a mystery. All the audience ever knows of him is that his life is saved by a dude one night after a water front dice game, after which the dude gives Johnny a job in the casino. Johnny is quick with a pair of dice or a deck of cards and equally quick in becoming the boss’ man Friday.
After this relationship is set, the boss goes away for a while, only to come back with Gilda. She is a magnificent ornament in any one’s life, even the haughty, urbane, mysterious casino proprietor’s. A woman of fire and wild recklessness, Gilda instantly assumes the role of torturing Johnny in preference to being the centerpiece of the boss’ collection. The torture game is one that he does not relish, the setup being what it is with the boss, but it turns out that he is even more expert at it than Gilda.
There are a lot of things going on at the casino – one of them being the building of a tungsten cartel whose boss will control the world – but they are subordinate in drama to the affairs of the two lovers.
Attention is kept virtually riveted upon Gilda and Johnny, who are convinced in their own minds that what they feel is mortal hatred for each other. Her idea of paying him off – for just what the audience is never actually told – is to pick up every handsome male who comes into the casino. His repayment for that is to snatch her out of the arms of each of these itinerant swains with the tormenting intimation that it is only for the boss that he bothers.
“I’ll take you out and bring you back as if you were – his laundry,” he tells her.
It’s a dramatic duel, you can be sure, alive with the suggestion that, at any moment both of them may be wiped out by any one of several other persons.
The characters of “Gilda,” a handsome, complicated, deadly lot if there ever was one, are neatly packaged by Columbia. Miss Hayworth is of ideal dimensions for Gilda, whose passion for Johnny achieves the effect of complete abandon at its climax. As the young man with the icy facade racing to drive her insane before he loses his own mind. Ford is equally effective. Two other good performances are those of George Macready as the suave casino master and Joseph Calleia as the worldly Argentine police chief, but the one audiences will find most engaging of the lesser lot is by Steven Geray. As a philosophic washroom attendant, he is a virtual delight. Especially in any narrative which goes in for tautness as frankly as does “Gilda.”
“GILDA,” a Columbia Pictures production starring Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford, screen play by Marion Parsonett from a story by E. A. Ellington, directed by Charles Vidor, and produced by Virginia Van Upp. At the Earle.
THE CAST
Rita Hayworth as Gilda
Glenn Ford as Johnny Farrell
George Macready as Ballin Mundson
Joseph Calleia as Obregon
Steven Geray as Uncle Pio
Joe Swayer as Casey
Gerald Mohr as Capt. Delgado
Robert Scott as Gabe Evans
Ludwig Donath as German
Don Douglas as Thomas Langford
Lionel Royer as German
S. Z. Martel as Little Man
George J. Lewis as Huerta
Rosa Rey as Maria