BEFORE: I caught a cold thanks to the recycled air on the plane back from Portland, so I'm very foggy today. A combination of Dayquil and Mountain Dew (DewQuil?) is keeping me going, but at some point I'm going to collapse. It's difficult to stay awake during a movie, and nearly impossible to sleep afterwards.
I picked this one to go next because Marilyn Monroe played a singer in "Bus Stop", and I think Rita Hayworth plays a similar cabaret-style singer in this one. Linking from "Bus Stop", Hope Lange was also in "Pocketful of Miracles" with Glenn Ford (last seen in "The Big Heat").
THE PLOT: The sinister boss of a South American casino finds that his right-hand man Johnny and his sensuous new wife Gilda already know each other.
AFTER: Well, as often happens, I set out to program a week's worth of films on a particular theme, and a secondary theme has surfaced. The first theme was the glamour girls of 1950's Hollywood, but this has turned into a discourse on sexual politics of that same time period.
Tonight we see a "love-hate" relationship between Johnny Farrell, a hustler-turned-casino manager, and Gilda, his ex-girlfriend who appears later as his boss's wife. And Johnny is assigned to watch over her, make sure she's safe - no, I can't imagine that one going south, either.
This film is famous for Rita Hayworth's singing number, "Put the Blame on Mame", which she performs in a slinky evening dress (one that really inhibits her dancing moves, which seems like a shame) and those long evening gloves. Once upon a time, footage of a woman slowly taking off long gloves was about the sexiest thing you could put on film - I guess because it led the minds of men to wonder what ELSE she was about to remove. But times change and now we have footage of every sort of sexual depravity available on the internet, so now of course this all seems very innocent by comparison.
NITPICK POINT: It seems to me that running a casino, even one in Argentina, would be a full-time job. I find it hard to believe that a casino owner would have time (or the inclination) to corner the world market on tungsten. Which is my way of saying that this was an odd choice of subplots.
Also starring Rita Hayworth (last seen in "The Lady From Shanghai"), George Macready (last seen in "Paths of Glory"), Joseph Calleia, Steven Geray.
RATING: 4 out of 10 hands of blackjack
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