There is much a Catholic reviewer can take from Gilda (1946), assuming one can make it through the entire film.  Perhaps that makes me somewhat of a fraud in terms of being a critic of cinema.  It might not sound like I enjoyed the movie despite it being a classic, particularly for Rita Hayworth, the female lead.  What I do recognize is that it is a well-crafted motion picture all around.  It is the behavior of the characters in it that make me say that it can be a difficult watch.  We will get into some of those details in a moment.  For now, know that the happy ending cannot hide the shady business that gets us to that point.  We should be thankful that we have a forgiving God.

Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford), obviously, is not named Gilda.  He is an American gambler who we meet in the final days of World War II in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  After taking a lot of money off of an assortment of sailors, soldiers, and other ruffians by shooting craps, he heads out to count his winnings.  People do not trust somebody who rolls that well, and for good reason because he had been playing with loaded dice, which he refers to as “making his own luck.”  Thus, we do not have the most Christian of characters, ideally speaking.  Some of those losers catch up with him and are about to do him harm when he is saved by a well-dressed man with a knife that springs from his walking stick.  This is Ballin Mundson (George Macready), and he gives Johnny the location of his underground casino located in the hotel he owns in a more respectable part of town.  The next day, Johnny goes there with the intention of obtaining some more cash with his well-used tricks.  He piles up a considerable amount of chips playing blackjack, only to be approached by a pair of thugs on the way out the door.  They take him to see Ballin, who does not mean Johnny too much harm but is eager to see the gambler out the door.  Instead, Johnny talks himself into a job on the casino floor, keeping an eye out for other cheats like him.  He seems to flourish in this role, thankful for the steady income and slowly gaining more of Ballin’s trust to the point where Johnny is put in charge of the casino.  Indeed, such is the confidence that Ballin puts in Johnny that the hotelier shows his manager a private safe before heading out of town on business.  Johnny is left to run the operation while Ballin is away.  Upon returning, Johnny is in for a surprise.  The day after departing, Ballin met a woman, marrying her on the proceeding day.  This is not just any woman.  This is our eponymous character (Rita Hayworth).  Johnny looks on in shock, while she appears to know exactly what she is about.  All this passes with a palpable tension that Ballin notices, but can only puzzle at for the moment.  However, I am going to spoil this now because it will give context to the rest of what I describe.  Gilda and Johnny had once been a couple, and it seems they had been, as the saying goes, “crazy” about one another.  She had flirted with other men to make him jealous, and he left her in a fit of rage.  In other words, neither of them do a good job of ruling their passions as the Bible teaches.  Now she has tracked him down and married his boss, meaning that she can do more of the same thing.  They each claim to not know the other, but their behavior clearly suggests otherwise.  Nonetheless, given her penchant for ending up on the arm of attractive men, Ballin tasks Johnny with keeping an eye on Gilda.  He accepts out of loyalty to Ballin, though there are other secrets to be kept.  While Johnny makes up excuses for Gilda going out with different guys, it is Ballin who is withholding information about his other businesses.  Ballin finally admits to Johnny the nature of the owner’s other activities when strange men with German accents, not to mention the Argentine police led by Detective Mauricio Miguel Obregón (Joseph Calleia), begin being more frequently seen at the casino and hotel.  Ballin is involved in tungsten trading.  As the head of a cartel, he sees control of this rare commodity as a way to rule the world.  There is only One true ruler, Christ the King, but these are Ballin’s words, so. . . .  Anyway, not long after an attempt on his life, Ballin makes the decision to leave for a while, putting the entire operation in Johnny’s hands.  That is not all that is to be left to Ballin’s right-hand man.  The night of Ballin’s departure is carnival night, or Fat Tuesday to us (you know, that day before the Catholic season of Lent?), and after another death in the casino, Ballin orders Johnny to take Gilda home.  With all the pettiness between them, Gilda and Johnny claim to hate each other before embracing in a kiss.  This is seen by Ballin, who promptly departs.  Johnny follows his employer to an airfield, only to watch Ballin take off and apparently crash into the ocean after a few miles.  Presumed dead, Johnny opens Ballin’s safe to find Gilda had been left everything in Ballin’s will, with Johnny as the executor.  Instead of making changes, Johnny opts for the status quo, even going so far as marrying Gilda.  However, this is part of his turn to get revenge on her, viewing marriage as a cage to keep the free-spirited Gilda in line.  She attempts to flee to Montevideo, Uruguay, singing in a lounge and filing for divorce, but Johnny tricks her into returning to Buenos Aires.  She then performs a provocative number that has Johnny’s goons forcing her off stage, and him slapping her.  He immediately regrets it.  Meanwhile, Detective Obregón is turning up the pressure to reveal the extent of the tungsten cartel, forcing Johnny to show the papers.  Feeling cornered, and with Gilda about to leave for the United States, Johnny reconciles with her.  Yet, before they depart, they are confronted by Ballin, who had faked his death.  Before he can get his revenge, he is speared in the back by Uncle Pio (Steven Geray), the wise bathroom attendant.  When Detective Obregón enters the room with a newly dead Ballin on the floor, Johnny thinks he is going to jail.  Instead, they are allowed to leave.

If I were Gilda and Johnny, I would never return to Buenos Aires ever again.  In fact, I would probably avoid South America all together.  I have no idea if they are Catholic, but this would mean missing out on such sites as the Christ the Redeemer monument overlooking Rio de Janeiro.  Indeed, that title for Jesus is a useful one in examining this film.  Throughout the proceedings, I did not feel a ton of sympathy for either Gilda or Johnny, though it rallied somewhat for her towards the end.  I have said this before, and will likely say it again, but getting revenge on people is not our purview.  Only God knows whether a person deserves the kind of punishment we seek when it comes to retribution, and as such it is best left into his hands.  The law is sometimes looked at for delivering justice, but the ultimate variety is, once more, up to God.  The Divine needs no symbolic blindfold as He sees the heart of all matters.  Besides, our characters seem content to function on the wrong side of the law.  Actually, one can say that Johnny uses the rules regarding divorce to keep Gilda under his thumb.  In the synopsis, I mentioned how Gilda is tricked into coming back to Buenos Aires, the culprit being one of Johnny’s men who leads her to believe that he is a lawyer that can help her obtain an annulment.  This is the word the Church uses to end what God has joined through matrimony.  A lot of people look at marriage in the Church as a totally binding commitment out of which one cannot get no matter what happens.  This does have some truth to it, but even the pope would agree that occasionally there are grounds for a husband and wife to be annulled.  This means that the marriage was never valid.  Given how Gilda and Johnny behave towards one another, it seems likely that the Church would not be against an annulment in this case.  It would be sad, but it could be done.

I supposed I should be grateful that Gilda and Johnny stay together in the end.  They even declare their love for one another, which is something.  What I do not like to see is all the abuse, physical and verbal, that they direct at one another.  If you see this one, maybe you will agree with me that perhaps they should have just gone their separate ways.