A Film Canon

Gilda turns on the homosocial love triangle between Ballin Mundson (George Macready), a Buenos Aires tycoon, Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford), right-hand man at his casino, and an elusive brilliance that is variously figured in terms of Ballin's three most distinctive possessions, or achievements - a state-of-the-art blade-tipped cane, a complete monopoly over local production and distribution of tungsten - the critical ingredient in light bulbs - and, above all, his wife, Gilda (Rita Hayworth), with whom Johnny also shares a turbulent romantic history. To this end, Vidor drenches Hayworth in sparkling light, while costume designer Jean Louis, makeup artist Clay Campbell and hair stylist Helen Hunt ensure that she is little more than a constellation of glittering fabrics and radiant textures - a mere ornament - that sits well with her relatively one-dimensional acting, and culminates with her iconic performance of 'Put The Blame On Mame'. The result is an unusual subversion of the noir universe, insofar as darkness becomes a reprieve from, rather than an ancillary to, the femme fatale, and imprisonment becomes a strategy on the part of the protagonists (especially Johnny) in response to her, rather than a state from which they themselves have to escape; or, rather, in which imprisonment is externalised, rather than individually experienced. From this perspective, the marked stylistic transition from the first act - which takes place in a casino so expansive and variegated as to hardly feel like an interior at all - to the third - which is both more claustrophobic and exterior-oriented - is merely a by- product of Johnny's attempt to construct a paranoid, superstitious architecture around Gilda; that is, to condense and literalise the spotlight that cruelly, ceaselessly pursues her.