dir. Charles Vidor
1946 // 1 hr 50 min // Digital Projection
Starring: Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready, Joseph Calleia
Few Hollywood films seethe with such queer intensity as “Gilda.” Beneath its surface glamour lies a noir of displaced desire, obsession, and rivalry, where eroticism flows less through romance than through looks, power struggles, and unspoken bonds between men. Rita Hayworth’s Gilda is not simply an object of desire, but a figure of camp excess whose iconic musical numbers turn heterosexual spectacle into provocation and masquerade. Set in a shadowy Buenos Aires of secrets and surveillance, Gilda encodes longing in what cannot be said, making it not just a noir classic, but a foundational text of queer cinema.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOODLAND... is a series hosted and programmed by KCAI lecturer Kara Heitz looking at classic Hollywood films and history from the advent of sound to the birth of New Hollywood.