‘Gilda’ or — Quantum Noir?
”Gilda, are you decent?”
We don’t know if Gilda is decent or not but we know she looks a million bucks, which can be very much said of the film itself because ‘Gilda’ (1946) is a movie of many grubby and indecent qualities and passions, the sort of grubby and indecent passions you might expect to be explored in grubby and indecent dives yet, instead, this apocalyptic little tale of jealousy, flaunted promiscuity and death is presented in the most glamorous way possible. The result is spellbinding.
The film opens with a great image — a pair of over-sized dice tumbling towards the camera and immediately I’m thinking of chance, entanglement and objects popping into existence. These dice have been thrown by Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) a chancer and gambler who picks them up, along with his ill-gained winnings (his dice are loaded), and walks off into the Buenos Aires night where he is promptly held up at gunpoint for the cash. Fortunately he is saved when a mysterious stranger, Ballin Mundson, pops into existence and saves him. Mundson runs a high-class casino; Munson has a cane with a blade hidden inside it; Mundson is strange.
Munson and Farrell hit it off (fall in love?) and Farrell becomes Mundson’s right-hand man, confident, bodyguard. How cosy, just the three of them: Mundson, Farrell and the blade. However, one day Mundson returns from a trip abroad with a surprise for Farrell — he has a new wife in the form of Gilda (Rita Heyworth). Farrell and Gilda obviously know each other and have a past, even though Farrell denies this to Mundson. Mundson assigns Farrell to watch over Gilda and it’s not long before a new threesome has been formed… with Gilda replacing the blade.
Yet trouble seems to be brewing. Mundson seems to have dealings with Germans gangsters (this is Argentina just after WW II after all) whilst Gilda is throwing herself unashamedly at every man she can find, but is she doing this to deliberately enrage her husband or Ferrell? The only question is — who is the most dangerous? Gilda or the Germans?
‘Gilda’ is a very sly movie as, on the surface, it’s a story we’ve seen a million times before: a down on his heels guy lands a cushy job with a powerful man with whom he also becomes a trusted friend then risks throwing it all away by falling in love with his boss’s beautiful wife. What makes ‘Gilda’ stand out though is that this tale, which if you go by the dialogue, could (maybe even should) be played out in dirty backstreet bars and gambling dens instead unfolds against the backdrop of lavishly ornate luxury. Their words are unwashed but the settings are pristine. ‘Gilda’ is most certainly gilded.
What also keeps the film vibrant is the location of madness and how it keeps flipping. Gilda is obviously up to some sort of manipulative game, but why? Is she crazy like Farrell keeps telling us?The story is narrated by Johnny Farrell so we only have his word for everything yet as events proceed we start to wonder if it might be Johnny who is unhinged and that his narration is simply a projection of his own insecurities. Our sympathies never get a chance to settle; it most certainly us who are the ones getting played with.
Top it off with gorgeous cinematography, great acting (Ford is unusually, and brilliantly, unlikable in this), a sassy score and you’re onto a classic noir.
Yet I couldn’t stop thinking about those dice, entanglement and quantum theory (I know, I know but go with me on this one) as time and again throughout the film there are references to coming into existence, almost as though none of these characters existed before the film started rolling. Obviously they didn’t, they’re IN the film so how could they exist outside it, but even though Farrell and Gilda have a past Farrell also tells Mundson that he feels he never actually existed until he met Mundson that night. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he only popped into existence like a sub-atomic particle when those dice were thrown when the film started. Same with Gilda, a woman we assume has a past but never discover what it was. Did she pop into existence when Farrell did and they’ll disappear together when the film stops after two hours of entanglement? Mundson, Gilda and Farrell: a group of particles in spatial proximity and who can’t be described independently of each other. Am I reading too much into this? Of course, but I can’t deny it was the overriding sensation I had as the closing credits rolled.
I was also expecting ‘Gilda’ to be a down to earth noir, one that dealt with a man fighting for his dignity or a woman’s battle to keep her guy or get the dough, but as the film went on the spectre of larger annihilation kept creeping in. The Germans run a tungsten cartel (the radioactive metal is used in missiles) and there is mention of the end of the world a few times and remember that Hayworth was the original bombshell and was painted on the plane that blew up Bikini Atoll. ‘Gilda’ shares more in common with the Apocalyptic Noirs of ‘Kiss Me Deadly’ (1955) and, most explicitly, Welles’ ‘Lady From Shanghai’ (and for many more reasons than simply Hayworth being in both than I can list here). Also, notice the technology Mundson uses to control sound. This is a film less concerned with the damaged inner psychologies of men returning scarred from conflict, such as ‘In a Lonely Place’, and more with the dangerous, futuristic possibilities war has created.
It’s the combination of all the above, a truly unique mixture, that provides ‘Gilda’ with so much of its power and there’s not really another noir like it. It’s like ‘Casablanca’ (1942) except with all idealism and decency replaced with blinding electromagnetic radiation.
