Glenn Ford, Chicano with Rita Hayworth in The Loves of Carmen

A new Rita Hayworth auction poster from Heritage--I am joking about Glenn Ford but the convergence of semiotics, physiognomy, race, and ethnicity in this poster is bracing!

Drop Everything! GILDA screening @ MCASD, March 26, 2009 at 7pm!

GILDA
THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2009 > 7 PM | MCASD LA JOLLA
$5 FOR MCASD MEMBERS, STUDENTS, AND SENIORS / $7 GENERAL

The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego co-presents Charles Vidor's classic film, Gilda, with San Diego State University's Department of English & Comparative Literature. Sex-symbol par excellence Rita Hayworth burns up the screen with sensuality to spare in her signature role as a femme fatale in this 1946 film noir classic. With its cabal of hoods and Nazis, the real magic of Gilda rests on the sexy shoulders of the one-and-only Hayworth who juggles the affections of the men in her life (played by Glenn Ford and George Macready) as a love triangle unfolds against the backdrop of an illegal casino in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Professor Bill Nericcio, chair of SDSU's Department of English & Comparative Literature, will introduce the film and participate in a post-screening Q&A session with MCASD Film Curator Neil Kendricks. [map/directions]

Here's a cool still released just before the film debuted--click the image to supersize it (brief commentary beneath the image below):

source

The image was no doubt released to cash in on Glenn Ford's stardom at the time of the film, but it totally misrepresents the erotic dynamics of Gilda that dominate Charles Vidor's noir classic; in the film Johnny Farrell, Ford's character, does anything but dominate Gilda--if anything, he plays Sacher von Masoch to her Marquis de Sade. Farrell, at any rate, has all he can handle in this menage a quad romance with Ballon Munson, exquisitely played by George Macready.

Here's a sequence that underscores Farrell's position vis-a-vis Gilda:



You can read an early version of my Rita Hayworth biotheory piece by clicking the image below; a revised and expanded version of it appears in Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America (2007).

Wow--Stage 6 Studio

I stumbled across an amazing new site for websurfing cinema buffs--theorists, cineastes, and film-geeks alike; it is called Stage 6 and it features high resolution clips and trailers.

nota bene: you may have to download and install divx software to see these clips! warning: some of these files are huge and will take ages to load if you are not on a decent broadband server.

Here's a scene from Gilda starring Rita Hayworth, aka Margarita Carmen Cansino--it's the pivotal scene from the film where Gilda's erotic theatrics un-nerve Glenn Ford, pushing his confused character, Johnny Farrell, a bi-sexual grifter, to the breaking point!