I can still recall the first time I saw the film Gilda.  I was sixteen years old, awkward, nerdy, and still figuring out my own identity.  Classic films were my obsession and my release from the uncertainty of being me — it seemed to me then that life was so much simpler in black and white.  It was more beautiful, too.  I far preferred stars like Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck, and Jean Arthur (all of them “fast talking dames” of the 1930s) to bombshells like Rita Hayworth (who oozed a bit too much sexuality for an overly bookish girl such as myself  to identify with).  However, I finally got around to Gilda purely out of curiosity:  I had heard the movie referenced so often in the film history books I enjoyed that I felt I was somehow neglecting my education by not viewing it.  Also, there was a certain allure to watching film noir at age sixteen:  it set me apart from the girls who giggled over the fluffy rom-coms of the 1990s.

Gilda horrified me as much as it entranced me.  The film, aesthetically, is possibly the most beautiful film noir ever made.  Even at sixteen, I could readily identify that the real artists involved in the film were men controlling the lights.  From the moment she first appeared on screen, Gilda was the most immaculate, hyper-sexualized version of womanhood that I had ever seen.  The trouble was, I couldn’t decide whether to be offended or sympathetic in my response to her.

Gilda, as a character, is completely reactionary.  She has no identity apart from men: she is constantly flirting, strutting, or in other ways responding to men for the entire film.  Never does she have even as much as a single line that reflects who she is apart from what men have “made her.”  Every choice she makes somehow ties to a man; most of the time, her choices are connected to her former lover, Johnny Farrell (played by Glenn Ford).   Gilda has absolutely no control over her own destiny and she only thinks she controls her very image (since even that is purely giving men what they want to see).  Seeing her through the eyes of an independent 1990s teenager, I saw through the gilding very quickly.  To me, it did not matter how stunning she appeared on screen — Gilda was a man’s conception of what a woman is, but she was not, in fact, an actual woman.

Note the way in which the lighting illuminates Gilda. Her beauty is much due to lighting as it is Rita Hayworth’s actual physical attractiveness.

Gilda as a character is a purely masculine view of femininity.  She alternates between seductive flirtation and treating men as her superiors who must “teach” her how to behave.  (It is impossible to miss the Freudian influence.)  One particular section of dialogue, in which Gilda is speaking to her racketeer husband, illustrates this perfectly:

Gilda:  I can never get a zipper to close. Maybe that stands for something; what do you think?
Mundson:  I think you were very rude to him.
Gilda:  To whom?
Mundson:  Johnny.
Gilda:  Was I?  Oh, dear.  That’s one of the things you’ll have to teach me, Ballin.  Good manners.
Mundson:  I want you to like him.
Gilda:  You sure about that?
Mundson:  What do you mean?
Gilda:  He’s a very attractive man, if you like the type.
Mundson:  He’s a boy.
Gilda:  Boys have the darndest way of growing up, Ballin. Almost when you’re not looking.
Mundson:  But I’ll be looking.

Although the film tries to trick the viewer into thinking that Gilda is in some way empowered, since it is revealed that her overt sexuality is entirely a device meant to infuriate her former lover, who had hurt her deeply, it is a false idea of empowerment.  After all, men are ultimately in control of not only her destiny, but her actions as well (since every action is merely a reaction).  And the only thing that Gilda ever actually wants in life (her sole ambition) is . . . a man.

There is fearfulness, too, in this version of femininity, with men 100% in control.  With her first husband, Gilda is a kept woman:

Mundson:  You’re a child, Gilda, a beautiful greedy child.  And it amuses me to feed you beautiful things because you eat with so good an appetite.
Gilda:  But I shouldn’t make any mistakes.
Mundson:  No, you shouldn’t.

With her true love, Johnny, whom she marries after the supposed death of her first husband, Gilda is a prisoner:

Johnny:  (In voiceover)  She didn’t know then what was happening to her.  She didn’t know then that what she heard was the door closing on her own cage. She hadn’t been faithful to him when he was alive, but she was gonna be faithful to him now that he was dead.

(Later in the film)

Johnny:  (In voiceover)  She wasn’t scared yet, because she didn’t quite realize, yet.  Right now, she was, she was just plain mad and she was hitting back . . . She just reached out for anyone.  They weren’t hard to find for a girl like Gilda . . . but wherever she went, whatever she did, it finally got to her that Buenos Aires was her own private prison.

Even when Gilda eventually flees from Johnny, she has to flee to another man in order to fit the masculine narrative.  At no point in the entire film can Gilda be independent.  When she realizes that this escape won’t work, she does a striptease in the hope of humiliating Johnny. The filmmakers do not allow Gilda full control over her actions in this scene either.  She only removes her long, black gloves and her necklace on her own — for the dress, she asks her male audience for help (they don’t, however, actually get her dress off).   And when she confronts Johnny at the end of the scene, triumphant in finally having her revenge, it takes only a swift slap from him to show both Gilda and the viewer that she has nothing.

The striptease scene further highlights the desperation and the reactionary nature of Gilda as a character.  She has no concept of herself as an individual identity apart from men; thus, she can easily cheapen and demean herself purely for the desired impact of her actions on Johnny.  When she spitefully talks to him at the end of the scene, her lack of thought for herself is readily evident.  Her reaction to being slapped is perhaps the sole genuine moment for Gilda in the entire film.  For those few seconds, her face betrays utter loss and hopelessness.

The movie, like most others of the 1940s, has a “happy” ending — or does it?  As a sixteen-year-old viewer, I felt that the filmmakers were lying to me when they portrayed Gilda and Johnny’s reconciliation as the joyous culmination of everything Gilda ever wanted.  To me, it was a  Pyrrhic victory.  Sure, Gilda had her man.  But she had won a man who had earlier shown just how capable he was of being every bit as cruel and demeaning to Gilda as ever other man she had ever involved herself with.  He could slap her and feel entirely justified.  What sort of life would she have after the film, with a man who so obviously objectified her?  And with her entire identity and ambitions resting upon this flawed man, what hope was there for true happiness for Gilda?

Watching this film again as a woman in my early thirties, I still feel the same way I did when I was sixteen.  I feel fascination at the artistry of the film and unease-mixed-with-horror at its view of femininity. And then, when I analyze this view in light of films still being made in Hollywood today, I realize that Gilda is still the predominate image of womanhood that Hollywood wants to convey.  At that point, I feel sick inside.