The Criterion Collection’s release of Charles Vidor’s Gilda came out this week. You can order it here.
Special features include: commentary track by critic Richard Schickel, interview with Film Noir guru Eddie Mueller, plus a couple of wonderful heart-warming clips from Martin Scorsese and Baz Luhrmann about how much the 1946 film continues to inspire them. And there’s more!
I wrote an essay on Gilda for the release, focusing on its impact at the time (and still), as well as the nature of Rita Hayworth’s breakthrough role (explosive, a kind of stardom that cannot be predicted or even planned for) and how much Gilda changed everything for her. I talk about her famous entrance, captured in the gif above.
Criterion just put my essay up on its site, so go check it out!
“The Long Shadow of Gilda“, Criterion Collection.
Truly fab essay, very well constructed. I finally got to see Gilda a couple of months ago after all the discussions here and found it just as dark and twisted as advertised — more so even. And your essay really helped me with that ending — “surreal” is definitely the feeling there. I remember a lot of shouting in rooms after Ballin’s death and that it could be resolved that way…
Jessie –
One of the most amazing things about Gilda that I didn’t mention because it seemed outside the scope of the essay: Glenn Ford and Macready knew exactly what they were doing in creating what is basically the main relationship in the film. The one between the two men. Sometimes, as you know, old films have a homoerotic vibe – but sometimes you wonder if the actors were conscious of it as they played it. (I think a lot of times they were, but you never know. But Gilda is the most explicit gay romance I’ve seen in this genre – and both actors knew it, played it, did not soft-pedal it. Pretty ahead of its time, I think. Gilda is almost an obstacle towards what the men really want – to be together.)
Love how messed up everything is. Love the sex. When she falls to Glenn Ford’s feet, crying – and her head is basically in his crotch?
Crazy movie.
yes, I remember you talking about the homoeroticism but it’s so obvious even if you haven’t been forewarned! Throughout the whole thing Johnny’s primary attachment is to Ballin and all his controlling manipulative interactions with Gilda become part of this narrow obsession. What the hell kind of relationship did Johnny and Gilda have the first time around? And I love how it’s not some wistful pining romance. It’s so messed up and they’re horrible people and you don’t even really get the impression that recognisable love is a factor. It’s like Compulsion, and Rope, and Lion in Winter, and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, and so on — the kind of movie The Celluloid Closet didn’t really want to admit existed. It’s not PLEASANT but it is vital, visceral.
I love to hear that the actors were game for it. Great movie and that’s not even touching on Hayworth’s amazing, totally unafraid performance.
// What the hell kind of relationship did Johnny and Gilda have the first time around? //
I know, right? It was all passion and fights and melodrama. Maybe Johnny knows he’s gay and doesn’t want to be and took it out on her. There’s SOMEthing going on there. I mean that chilling line in his voiceover: “She wasn’t be loyal to him when she was alive. But she WOULD be loyal to him when he was dead.”
It’s all about Ballin.
// the kind of movie The Celluloid Closet didn’t really want to admit existed. It’s not PLEASANT but it is vital, visceral. //
Hmm – very good point – could you talk more about that Celluloid Closet thing? I think I know what you mean, but I’d love to hear your take.
Oh shit, you’ve stepped in it now. Well, here’s the thing with The Celluloid Closet. It’s understandably concerned with queer representation being limited to, essentially, sissy, pervert murderer, and miserable lonely/dead gay for good chunks of the century (and sadly Vito Russell died too early and the movie was made right on the cusp of an explosion of queer cinema so it was immediately outdated). But in focussing on the emotion involved in seeing yourself represented on the screen it misses this other huge thing — the emotion involved in watching a movie.
There are many movies like the ones I listed where queers are twisted and/or sad and/or ashamed and the intensity and complexity of that emotion is what MAKES the movie. Richard’s humiliation and pain in Lion in Winter — the whole premise of Gilda, which I don’t think even gets mentioned in TCC — Stockwell’s fucked-up attachment in Compulsion — the deceitful manipulative thing Joe and Billy have going in Hard Core Logo — the entirety of Brokeback Mountain — these things are not pleasant but they are, at least, elemental, interesting, alive, and as a viewer they make you feel.
That’s not even getting into the errors it makes in its taxonomy, its quashing of the thrills of deviancy and repression, its demands that things be made explicit. And it’s really hard to escape this kind of thinking. Like, on Keith’s recent revisit of I Want To Believe over on AV Club (I only just realised from your other post that this was your Keith! He’s great) the comments were fascinating, particularly about the two gay antagonists. And I was like, number one, watch your goddamn mouths because that’s my TV Boyfriend Callum Keith Rennie you’re talking about, and number two, the fact that the bad guys are gay and are killing for their big gay love is not homophobic ipso facto.
Now OF COURSE we need a wider range of representation. This always has been and still is true. Of COURSE the problem is that we didn’t get happy gays to balance out the sad ones. I certainly do not blame people — particularly people who have faced harder hardships than I — for desiring the kind of pleasant gay romance and representation that I cannot stand. There MUST be a place for that stuff and I will fight for it. The Celluloid Closet movie is actually very important to me and I could never say it’s not a significant documentary — no one could who’s seen Suzie Bright’s face when she talks about seeing Dietrich in Morocco for the first time — any queer person born before the year 2000 knows exactly what she’s feeling — and probably any person in a minority or who’s felt irrevocably different and has finally seen that difference reflected on the silver screen. But it misses a metric ton of what I value about movies and storytelling and I wouldn’t give up a bare second of Gilda for something nicer.
Jessie – wow, thank you so much – this is a fascinating perspective – Interestingly, I have talked with my gay cinephile friends and they have told me the same thing. My pal Mitchell loves the twisted torment of noirs with its not-so-buried homosexual desire and panic – and all that stuff – and he gets very frustrated with the sweet “coming out” teen dramas that are in vogue now. He understands WHY they need to be – a desire for positive representation – and in a way he wishes such movies had been in vogue when he was growing up gay, and there was zero representation, except for hostile ones.
But he said, “Listen, I don’t care if the characters are gay if it’s a bad movie. MAKE A BETTER MOVIE.” ha!
But the twisty pleasure of some of these movies – Lion in Winter – Compulsion – Gilda – tap into some mother-lode of desire that is intensely pleasurable. I think a lot of people who want art to be a Social Corrective (in the main) don’t value pleasure as much. I get that’s why the case, but that’s one of the reasons why I hesitate to get on that bandwagon. It’s like people who can’t seem to read literature that dates from before 20 years ago. Their sensibilities, somehow, have been stunted.
Again, I understand why this is the case – although I’m not gay. And women, although a despised minority in a lot of ways, DOMINATED Hollywood for a good 20 years before they were stuffed back into goody-goody domestic roles. So I can watch Joan Crawford or Bette Davis or Hepburn and see a ton of complexity out there.
Interesting that Celluloid Closet was instnatly dated – I hadn’t thought of that!
// its quashing of the thrills of deviancy and repression, its demands that things be made explicit. //
Hm. Yes. It’s kind of like what I said in the Robert Burns post: oppression has a way of making unbelievable art that withstands the test of time. Whereas some of the more explicitly themed things – like TV movies – are dated almost the second they come out.
Have you seen Carol?
I was talking with a gay friend of mine who loved it so much but she mentioned that some of her gay friends had problems with the sex scene – they thought it was too sad and “womanly” – all gay sadness and repression, etc. – and they wanted more raw passion.
I’m an outsider in that discussion and I would never tell people not to feel what they feel – but I thought the sex scene was magnificent in its sadness and tenderness. Gay or straight, we rarely see such REAL intimacy onscreen – where two characters are almost afraid of “going there.” Of letting go. Even of having an orgasm – which Highsmith talks about explicitly in the book. Therese doesn’t know what that whole thing is about and does not know her own body – she has slept with men, and disliked it, she never had an orgasm and didn’t seem to know that that was even supposed to happen – and then with Carol the feelings come naturally, she starts to go there- and is almost afraid of it.
All of this seems very real and recognizable to me. It’s so rare to see a sex scene that makes you want to weep.
I haven’t read much gay commentary on Carol – so I should do a little more due diligence on that end.
(I loved the movie.)
and yeah – Keith!! Isn’t he awesome??
// And I was like, number one, watch your goddamn mouths because that’s my TV Boyfriend Callum Keith Rennie you’re talking about, and number two, the fact that the bad guys are gay and are killing for their big gay love is not homophobic ipso facto. //
hahahaha
I remember my friend Mitchell saying that whatever year St. Elmo’s Fire came out – he went to movies all the time, saw a million movies that year and every year – and that swishy horrible neighbor (who always had a froufrou drink in his hand, completely with umbrella) was the ONLY gay character he saw onscreen that year. And it was a hostile representation – not as hostile as the gay neighbor in Adam’s Rib who makes me shiver with the hatred behind that character – but pretty close.
Mitchell was like, “Having that character be the ONLY representation of your Self onscreen that you see in an entire year is the definition of homophobia, and it lets you know what the culture thinks of you.”
There’s quite a bit of corrective to all that now – including the representation of transgender characters – and change, of course, is never fast enough – but at least there’s more out there that teenagers (or anyone else) can see. There’s not just the ONE type.
Okay Jessie so this is a (somewhat) hilarious thing that just occurred to me – that I could never have included in the essay because … well … nobody else except the people on my site would “get it.”
I just re-watched the SPN episode Bitten. As you probably remember, I didn’t like it the first time around – felt “cheated” because JA and JP weren’t in it, blah blah. (This is why I’m lucky I don’t do current re-caps. I need time to sit with things. Otherwise i miss a ton!). But your comments on it back whenever we spoke about it made me go back and take a second look. I saw so much more, and loved the POV shift, and watched the special-feature showing how they did it, and I appreciated it much more.
But now – after this last 3rd viewing – I think I really understand it – and now I get why the episode is so good and so strong. (I’m so slow!!)
How could I have missed it? Maybe because I was frustrated at the format so tuned out the subtleties.
So it is so clear that the beta male (if you will) is in love with the alpha male – that Brian (beta, guy with camera) is not in love with the GIRL, but in love with his friend. I mean, the shot where he’s just focusing on the guy’s crotch across the store! Or how he moves in to film the two kissing. My radar just wasn’t sharp enough to really see what was going on – I thought it was a Love Triangle, and that Brian was jealous cause his friend got the girl. Silly silly Sheila. Yes, Brian WAS jealous, but it was because was in love with his FRIEND, not the girl.
I’m embarrassed that I didn’t see it immediately.
It clicked for me this last viewing within the first 10 seconds – and suddenly I thought of GILDA. How the woman is practically expendable – or, at least, she’s just caught in the middle. The real drama, the real relationship, is what was going on between those two guys. Even SHE doesn’t seem to realize it.
So. There is my treatise on how “Bitten” is somehow inspired by GILDA.
I feel so silly for not seeing all of this the first time – because now it’s so obvious what is really going on.
Glad I stuck with it.
Re: gay movies. Yes, I am with Mitchell – give me a good movie any day — make me feel alive (or at least INTERESTED! Like, beyond Jimmi Simpson’s great comic performance D.E.B.S. is a wonky movie by any standards but at least it has the ambition to play with genre and tone). But he is absolutely right that the hostility you feel coming from some of those (especially 80s) characters is palpable and hurtful. It’s absolutely a “being put in your place” move. I guess Dog Day Afternoon was too dangerously nuanced and free-floating.
Interesting that Celluloid Closet was instantly dated – I hadn’t thought of that!
Yeah, 1995 was the last year The Celluloid Closet could ever have been made. I mean, here is a list of movies it missed out on that were all released before 2000: Velvet Goldmine, The Birdcage, In & Out, Talented Mr Ripley, But I’m A Cheerleader, Being John Malkovitch, Gia, Bound, Midnight in the Garden of Good And Evil, Boys Don’t Cry, Boondock Saints, Go, Chasing Amy, The Opposite of Sex, Gods and Monsters, Happy Together, Beautiful Thing, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Home For The Holidays, Crash, Love and Death on Long Island, The Object of My Affection, Election, Too Wong Foo, Total Eclipse, and, regrettably, Wild Things. And those are just the ones I’ve SEEN, and this is not to even touch on television — Will & Grace started in 1998, a year after Ellen came out, and a year before Queer as Folk started in the UK.
Re: Carol.
I am so frustrated about Carol because I haven’t been able to shake my instinctive, violently negative reaction to the first trailer I saw for it. I haven’t seen the movie yet. People I trust (incl you) say it’s fantastic. I love Todd Haynes — thought the similar-seeming Just Like Heaven was great — and would never complain about looking at Cate Blanchett’s and Kyle Chandler’s faces. Rooney Mara bugs me but I’m sure she’s fine. It’s just a totally instinctive reaction. Had it to Freeheld and Blue is the Warmest Colour too. Lesbian movies are notoriously terrible so it’s probably a protective move and I’m a lot closer to the subject obviously which paradoxically makes it harder to relate — I couldn’t be more bored by torturous coming out stories or melodramas (particularly May-December or teacher-student ones like Freeheld & BITWC which could be the prob with Carol too) or those ones that are like fifteen fun quirky NYC lesbians wearing overalls in a studio apartment in the 90s (maybe that could make a good horror film).
What I want out of f/f movies (moreso than m/m movies) is genre (I know that Carol is technically in a genre) and twisty stuff, not realism or melodrama — I want Xena, Bound, Joanie Stubbs and Calamity Jane, Charlie. Gimme lesbian or queer Wonder Woman, that’s what I’m interested in. In the meantime I am sure I will get around to Carol at some point and love it. Very interested to hear the differing reactions over the sex scene.
So. There is my treatise on how “Bitten” is somehow inspired by GILDA.
LOL!!!! I love it I am so glad you came back to write it down. I am definitely gonna have to watch again with more attention to Brian’s performance because for once I don’t think I defaulted to the gay read. For me that one was about Brian’s nice-guy entitlement. Maybe they distracted me by highlighting all the ‘workplace romance’ stuff with Sam and Dean. But whether it’s one or the other or something in between (maybe Brian has a thing for them both?) I find it really impressive how much story and earned stakes they were able to pack into a single episode of three completely unknown characters.
I feel a bit embarrassed too for not picking up on it because the pattern in SPN is obviously there — it’s not like the question of “are Sam and Dean more interested in each other than women” isn’t raised with regularity in the show. It’s an interesting and messed-up dynamic and really it’s present in spades in so many buddy movies and movies about close male connections. Another one The Celluloid Closet forgot about is Miller’s Crossing (even though it also has actual gay characters). For me it is CRYSTAL CLEAR that what is going on in Miller’s Crossing is that Gabriel Byrne is sleeping with/being a bastard to Marcia Gay Harden because his true love-object is Albert Finney.
There are three interesting variations on this dynamic that I can think of off the top of my head:
Singin’ in the Rain, in which the Kelly-O’Connor relationship is able to open up so sweetly to let in Debbie Reynolds — I treasure that trio — no tension there at all.
Rebel without a Cause — similar thing + angst and Themes.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid — you get the impression that anyone could bang anyone in that trio and it would all be cake, not to mention blazingly hot.
Jessie – Holy shit, about the movies that came out post-Celluloid Closet. Amazing. I always wondered if “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” as annoying as it could be, had something to do with mainstream-ing the “usefulness” (help, it’s a horrible term) of gays – that straight men NEED gay men in their lives. Condescending – similar to the Magical Negro trope – that black characters are there to show white characters the right way to live (sigh) – and also it struck me as pretty cruel that these queer guys were often helping straight men get ready for their wedding or marriage proposal – and not once was it mentioned that these Fairy Godmother Helpers were NOT ALLOWED to participate in the same ritual. So there were all kinds of things wrong with it – but it seemed to suddenly mainstream a certain kind of conversation that had been invisible before. Or marginalized – not center stage like they were in the series.
// Gimme lesbian or queer Wonder Woman, that’s what I’m interested in. //
Love it! I think, too, that sometimes genre (horror or sci-fi or comic book stuff) can address things with FAR more ambiguity than on-the-nose message-y movies can. I’m watching Jessica Jones right now – which I had assumed was not my thing – but there’s enough positive stuff out there that I decided to check it out. Similar to our conversations about SPN’s smart-ness about trauma and PTSD and survival skills (or not) – without ever making it ABOUT PTSD or trauma, Jessica Jones is about the aftermath of sexual assault and the dissociation/self-loathing that haunts people afterwards. To me, that’s what it’s about – and the WAY it’s about it is really subtle – and – despite the superhero part of it – it feels very grown-up. Like, we are allowed to think about these things, and ponder them … it’s not on the nose. And Jessica herself is difficult to “love” – she’s promiscuous, she drinks too much, she’s difficult – but that’s all part of what happens after you’re assaulted – and she’s fighting her way through it. I love how confrontational the show is about what it’s actually like. It’s getting away with all kinds of really cool things because it’s not saying EXACTLY what it means. I definitely think there are some racial issues in the casting – I’ve read the criticism and I get it – but that germ of the show – the sexual assault/trauma germ – is really well done.
Genre is way more flexible.
If I had to put Carol in a genre, it would be 1950s melodrama. So there’s that overblown quality to some of it – and it LOOKS exquisite. I’d be interested to hear your take – especially considering your visceral dislike of the trailer. So far, most of my gay friends have raved about it – and I’ve heard some chatter like “The men seem too modern” – but I think that’s silly and these people need to realize that 21st century men did not INVENT being interesting and complex.
And yeah, watch “Bitten” again – would love to hear your thoughts. I get the nice-guy entitlement thing too – or, that was my initial read. But now I think it’s all about his tortured feeling of desire for his friend and how when his friend and the girl are kissing HE wants to be kissing his friend. Member that scene in Compulsion when Dean Stockwell takes the girl out and tries to rape her in the field and then can’t (I’m assuming) get it up and bursts out crying? My memory may be hazy but it’s so clear he’s trying to deflect his true feelings and true self – onto a woman – but he can’t do it gently, because he doesn’t FEEL that way – and so he has to punish her/himself for his failure. Not sexually, but identity-wise. It’s kind of devastating. And so with the gay read, I saw Brian trying to convince the girl to come away with him and leave his buddy behind – as more of a one-upmanship with the person he really wanted. He can’t just come out and say, “I’m in love with you.”
and yeah, all the Sam/Dean workplace romance stuff! So funny – so the POV shift makes that “take” explicit – Sam and Dean do look like a bickering couple – and meanwhile, in one of the deleted scenes, Sam sneaks around the corner to try to call Amelia while Dean is buying booze. It’s so messed up. Sam is cheating on Dean, basically. The kids mis-interpret it all (hilarious) but they’re also clicking into what WE sometimes see – AND it’s reflecting their own twisted Love Triangle.
Your final three movies: I love them all, and for the reasons you describe. Rebel Without a Cause could be seen as very healing – and my same friend Mitchell said he saw it on TV when he was 9 or 10 and understood exactly what was going on with Plato, and he (Mitchell) felt amazed, almost like: “Are they … allowed to show this?”
It’s so enraging, but at least there were examples out there that could light the way for him.
Okay, I watched Bitten again, and I gotta say something I thought myself literally incapable of saying — I don’t see the gay there! I think it’s in the Brian performance because I can see the building blocks of it, the crotch shot, the focus on them kissing, the bones of that homoerotic pattern but I just don’t pick up on ANY of it from Brian. So weird especially considering as you say the A and B plots are both about who gets to pair off in an m-m-f threesome.
I definitely remember that scene in Compulsion and I definitely agree with your read of it but yeah I don’t see it in Bitten. I agree his attraction to the girl is superficial and insignificant — but I think it’s really about power, not about repression or deflection or substitution. But I think it is SO COOL that you see it!
Yes, Queer Eye was a really important moment I think! I guess I’m saying the opposite now of what I was talking about with TCC (my objection with TCC is the way it categorises representation into good and bad without embracing diversity and the power of film as film — I mean, movies are always going to mean different things to different people, and one man’s sissy is another man’s icon, and even Plato’s tragic end didn’t diminish the tremulous wonder your friend Mitchell felt) but QEFTSG domesticated the hell out of gay guys — got them into people’s homes.
There are a lot of criticisms you could make about QEFTSG but you know it’s like Harvey Milk said — it’s once people realise you’re in their homes, their families, their bars, their shops, their workplaces, their everyday lives — that they are (hopefully) forced to come to terms with you as boring-ass people that they care about, not freaks or threats or strangers. (I happen to think the most trenchant criticism of QEFTSG is an anti-capitalist & queer critique about turning the spectrum of “queerness” into a bunch of acceptable white guys whose purpose is to create “appropriate” or “adequate” consumer-citizens — but this is the eternal conundrum when it comes to difference — how to be accepted without being transformed? Like I said, I like that Gilda (the movie) REFUSES to be domestic. I do not want to be friends with those gays (even though they are stylish as hell))
I have seen and really enjoyed Jessica Jones for just the reason you say! I didn’t pick up on racial issues with the casting, I’d be interested to hear what you mean there. I LOVED the whole recurring “smile” thing in that show. I wonder how much men miss when they watch it.
I will come back to talk about Carol once I’ve seen it! I hope I can eat my words.