GILDA

 The most homoerotic of all film-noirs and one of those unlikely masterpieces that the American cinema used to throw up every now and then back in the day. The director was Charles Vidor which, in itself, tells you nothing but with "Gilda" he hit the motherlode. No other film-noir had a central triangle as scintillating as the one between Glenn Ford, George Macready and Rita Hayworth, particularly when it's Hayworth's Gilda who comes between Ford and Macready, ('You must have lived a gay life', Ford's Johnny tells Macready's Ballin when they meet), while the innuendo-laden dialogue, courtesy of Marion Parsonnet and Jo Eisinger from a E. A. Ellington story with a little uncredited help from Ben Hecht, ('If I was a ranch they would have named me the bar-nothing'), sizzles even more than Hayworth when she sings, (dubbed, of course), 'Put the Blame on Mame'. Stunningly photographed by the great Rudolph Mate and with career-best performances from Ford and Hayworth, this is one of the great American movies, like "Casablanca", that has passed into movie legend and if it had been the only film Vidor ever directed, he would have been hailed as a genius.