Foster on Film

Gambler and American expatriate Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) is saved from a robber by casino owner Ballin Mundson (George Macready) and becomes his right-hand man.  Trouble erupts when Mundson marries the overly sexual Gilda (Rita Hayworth), who had been Johnny’s previous lover. The two have a love/hate relationship, with an emphasis on hate. Gilda sets out to upset Johnny by running around with other men while Johnny does his best to hide it from Mundson. When Mundson’s Nazi connections remove him from the uneasy triangle, Johnny takes the opportunity to punish Gilda.

Some works of art are classics, masterpieces that speak to everyone, of any age and in any time (well, within reason).  Others belong to a specific generation. They reflect what is going on at that moment as viewed by a target segment of the population.  Most of these art works present something that hasn’t been seen before, or seen often, and that thing is of inordinate importance to the group.  These works often are meaningless, inappropriate, or far worse, boring to everyone else. Nirvana’s Smells like Teen Spirit is a prime example in recent music.  It went right to the soul of early ’90s twenty-year-olds, but is painful to my retired mother and ignored by anyone who got their drivers license in the new century.  Rebel Without a Cause was a metaphoric anthem to ’50s teens trying to escape an oppressive world.  Now, teens giggle at its over-ripe dialog and acting.

Which brings us to Gilda.  It was the height of post-WWII, production-code-censored sexuality.  For anyone in their late teens to early forties in 1946, this was it.  This was the movie that made them hot and bothered.  And it stands or falls on that sexuality.

No one at the time even noticed the plot, which is just as well.  Mundson hires some failed cheat off the street to run his business?  Odd hiring practice.  Who ran it before?  Mundson knows Johnny and Gilda had a relationship in the past but he puts them together whenever possible.  Why?  Mundson runs an evil cartel (so little explanation is given that it’s best just to characterize it as evil) and yet has no plans should he run into trouble, and if you can figure out how he intends to regain control at the end, you know more than the writers.  With so little story, Gilda barely fits in its genre.  It’s starts as Noir, but spends most of its time as a two-character melodrama, where people do things only because house wives would find it titillating, not because it makes any sense for the characters.

The directing is nothing special.  Some shots are nice, but others highlight the artificial setting.  Johnny gambles at the casino and the frame gives us nothing but him and a blank wall.  The dialog is sub par as well.  Gilda tosses a few good zingers, but the normal conversations lack both reality and wit (you need one or the other) and the few memorable lines (“If I’d been a ranch, they would have named me The Bar None”) are cheesy fun, not intelligent or lyrical.  It’s at its worst with the bloated and unnecessary voice-over, inserted so that we know this is Film Noir.  Noir narration should give us something we can’t get otherwise, but here Johnny tells us what we can see and hear.  He states that he heard singing at night.  Well, so do we.  He advises us that Gilda is scared at the same time we see her being scared.

So it all comes down to sex, and time has not been kind.  My parents often remarked on how sexy this film was, usually after commenting on how it’s always more exciting when people keep their clothing on.  Well, it’s not always more exciting when everyone is dressed, and Gilda is a relic.  Rita Hayworth isn’t the problem.  She had sex appeal to burn.  She was the “Sex Goddess,” and while that title is overstating things, she’s supplies whatever zip Gilda has.  But mere presence isn’t enough.  If you have Angelina Jolie (the current sexpot of choice of internet poll-takers) sitting on a stool reading the paper for an hour, it’s not going to be exciting.  Hayworth needs to do something to be sexy, not just walk around and look sad.

Any fan of the film should, at this point in my review, be shouting about the striptease.  Yup, that’s the moment.  No one would even remember this film without the striptease.  It’s far more tease than strip with only a glove removed, but I suppose it manages to qualify for the designation.  Gilda sways in a black dress, a large bow over Hayworth’s gut, hiding the effects of her pregnancy,  singing “Put the Blame on Mame,” an astonishingly un-sexy song for this pivotal scene.  Were there no torch songs available?  Anyway, Hayworth moves this way and that, keeps herself covered and avoids any overt movements that would upset the censors, and the whole thing is…nice.  Call it quaint.  But sexy?  Not in any overwhelming way.  Not in a post-Hays code world that now has Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner-Body Heat), Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone-Basic Instinct), and Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino-The Last Seduction).  I’ll simply ignore that they already had Slim Browning (Lauren Bacall-To Have and Have Not).  I’m not commenting on the beauty of the ladies, but rather on the fantasy, and Gilda is a fantasy for 1946.  Her dance is pleasant and there’s some family-friendly sexuality there, but it isn’t enough to hang a movie on.  If you’re tastes are more fitting to that time period, if you find women sexiest when their movements are G-rated and they are completely covered, Gilda may have some value for you.  For the rest of my generation, and the one that came after me, there’s little here.

Actually, there’s less than nothing.  The morality the film professes is disturbing, with no place in the modern world.  We’re still in “loose woman” territory.  Apparently, Gilda’s sleeping around is equivalent to, or even worse than Johnny’s physical abuse.  Johnny’s slapping Gilda isn’t nice, but it’s OK because she’s a slut.  But wait, she isn’t.  You see, Johnny’s unlawful imprisonment, mental cruelty, and physical violence can be forgiven so long as he repents, but no woman could ever be pardoned for the sin of sexual promiscuity.  By 1940s movie-values, Gilda could never be absolved.  So, the movie gives the audience an out.  Apparently, Gilda’s never done anything.  She only pretended to sleep around.  That way, she’s still pure, and can be pardoned for her only true transgression, lying, at the end.  There’s a message here, and I hope that no one wants to hear it any more.

Like many Film Noirs, Gilda has a vague element that wouldn’t have gotten past the censors if stated clearly.  In this case, it’s the homosexual subtext of Mundson and Johnny’s relationship.  It’s nothing more than that and falls apart if you try to fit it into the plot.  Mundson’s cane could be a symbolic penis that he swings in Johnny’s direction, but if you want to play that game, all you’ll be left with are a few symbols.

Older critics often discuss Gilda alongside Noir classics such as The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and Double Indemnity.  It should know better than to play with its betters.

Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd) returns from the war with his two buddies (William Bendix & Hugh Beaumont), one of whom has a brain injury. His sleazy drunken wife, Helen (Doris Dowling) has been carrying on an open affair with Eddie Harwood (Howard Da Silva) a wealthy criminal, and admits to killing their child in a drunken crash. Johnny leaves her, and happens to be picked up by Joyce (Veronica Lake), Eddie’s wife. When Helen is found dead, the police search for Johnny, who intends to find the murderer on his own.

Thought of as a major Film Noir, The Blue Dahlia lacks the stylish cinematography of the best of the movement. It’s shot like an earlier crime drama. It also lacks the wit of top Noirs. It does have the grimy worldview. These are some nasty people. Johnny is unpleasant. He has plenty of reason to be unpleasant, but that doesn’t change the fact. Alan Ladd plays him switching between mean and blank. His wife has no redeeming qualities and her friends are empty. The house detective is a blackmailer and the hotel manager is connected to the mob. Pretty much anyone that pops up on the street is a crook. At least the guy with the shrapnel in his head has reason to be a bad date. The exceptions to the dark world are Johnny’s other buddy and Joyce, both of whom are saints. It’s hard to see what she sees in Johnny, since nothing on screen tells us.

Actually, it’s hard to see a lot of the things in The Blue Dahlia. The plot is based on a series of coincidences, with people just happening to run into each other all over the city. By the third time it happens, the film has lost any dramatic power and can only be taken as a romp—a romp with a lot of scummy people. Raymond Chandler, who authored the screenplay, knows how to put together a story, but this one was rushed. Worse, the ending is a mess, and not his fault. He wrote a workable (if obvious) final act, but the War Department objected, so Chandler did the best he could, which wasn’t all that good. Besides the pointless identity of the killer, the film completely ignores three dead bodies. It makes the nice chat with the unknowing widow feel rather strange.

OK, so the story is horrible, but it does move along at a nice clip. The secondary cast are all excellent and fun when allowed to be. And then there is Veronica Lake. This is one of her better performances. If you are not a fan, take a half star away from my rating. I am a fan, so I’m happy to watch this on an afternoon with a very cheaply priced ticket.

Lake and Ladd co-starred in two other Noirs, This Gun for Hire (1942) and The Glass Key (1942).