Review of Gilda (1946) by Lynne N — 09 Jan 2008

I was initially surprised to see such a boyish Glenn Ford and to see some pretty good acting, at least until Rita entered the picture. She had the usual highly-stylized acting of the era, which makes so many "classic" films a drag for me.

She was really pretty and had a nice voice. I thought the tension between the three principals was great though because Rita's scenes with McCready were much more believable. It was hard for me to understand Ford's loyalty to McCready's character just based on the idea that he might have saved his life.

So I accepted that there was some kind of homoerotic issue there as well, because otherwise I can't care about characters that just care about money. Uncle Pio and some other minor characters were really good.

In general though, especially as the film progressed, the immaturity and dated chauvinistic behavior degenerated right into plain old abuse, which was supposed to romantic. I then started to feel the film sucked.

Then they realize at the last minute over the dead body, they love each other and have hope they will be able to head home and treat each other right? Please! I gave it three stars as because that is the mid-point for what was truly lame and what really worked, in my humble opinion at least!