Episode 101: Rethinking Gilda

Is the 1946 classic film noir a story of a weird throuple? That's certainly the modern interpretation of it. (Because in today's world, everything is sex. 24/7/365. 🙄)

But I wonder - is there something much deeper? Let's think about it...

Everyone is in Argentina... Ballin Mundson runs a casino and has connections to German mobsters and a tungsten cartel... WWII ends and the Germans want their cartel back... Mundson has a Nazi dueling scar across his face... 

If we think of Mundson as a Nazi expat, the fixation on sex falls away and something sinister emerges. 🤔

Links:

https://tubitv.com/movies/691806/gilda

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

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Transcript

 Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Episode Summary:

Sara Causey discusses the 1946 film noir "Gilda," starring Rita Hayworth and Glen Ford, and argues that it is not just about a salacious love triangle but a deeper commentary on fascism and Nazi ideology. She suggests that the character Ballon Munson, played by George Macready, represents a sadistic, controlling figure who manipulates Johnny Farrell (Glen Ford) and Gilda (Rita Hayworth). Sara interprets the film as a critique of fascist power dynamics, drawing parallels to real-life Nazi figures like Kurt Blom and Otto Skorzeny, both known for their scars and involvement in atrocities. She encourages viewers to rewatch the film through this lens.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Gilda, Rita Hayworth, Glen Ford, film noir, censorship, bisexual love triangle, Buenos Aires, tungsten monopoly, Nazi ideology, fascism, sadism, control, power dynamics, Hollywood censors, historical context.

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I want to talk about the classic 1946 film noir, Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth and Glen Ford. Now, obviously the movie didn't come out just yesterday, but I don't want to spoil it for anybody, and spoilers will abound in this episode. There's no way for me to talk about the film as I want to, without getting into plot spoilers. So if you haven't seen the film yet, if it's on your to do list, come back to this episode later. I would love for you to watch the movie, come to your own conclusions and then come back to this episode, because the way that I interpret the film is apparently not the common way people get into all kinds of salacious sex ideas. And I'm like, I think that's the window dressing. I think we're being told something much deeper and more horrifying in this film. As of this recording, it's available to watch free of charge on Tubi. That can change. I don't control what's available for free on streaming, but in any event, I do believe that it's a wacky, weird, but dark and horrifying film that's worth your time. If you're still with me, choose your frosty beverage of choice, and we'll saddle up and take this ride

Searching for your next great read, the kind of book you can't put down? Check out Sara's award winning biography, decoding the unicorn on amazon.com, now back to the show.

So the prevailing modern interpretations of this film seem to really get into the sexual, the salacious. And it is true that back in the 40s, censorship was much different in films than it is today. I'm sure that censors back then would look at films that come out a dime a dozen now and be like, Oh my God, look at all of the sex and nudity and gratuitous violence. Their heads would probably explode. So the idea is they had to speak in riddles. They had to speak in codes. But the Easter eggs are there if you know where to look for them, wink and with Gilda. Supposedly, the Easter eggs are that you have these three characters. You have Johnny Farrell, who's played by Glen Ford, you have Gilda, who's played by Rita Hayworth, and then you have ballon Munson, who's like, this rich well to do, guy that's played, I think, by George McCready, and they're in a weird, sadistic love triangle, where they're all bisexual and they're all In love with each other. And I'm like what, I will admit, I'm not always super swift on the uptake, but I didn't, immediately, as I was watching the film, assume that everybody was sexually active and everybody was involved in some kind of Jerry Springer love affair with each other. I mean, maybe my interpretations, my ideas, are certainly not gospel. They're not the only ideas out there, but that wasn't the direction that my mind went in. I actually think that the film is about something quite different. So I want to first go over some high points of the plot. You have Johnny Farrell, again, played by Glen Ford. He's an American that goes to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Let's think about that for a minute, because it's going to become highly relevant in my interpretation of what this film is actually about Johnny Farrell is an American who goes to Buenos Aires, and the film opens and he's like, doing some illegal back alley gambling at the city docks with some sailors, and he has his own dice, and they're rigged. And after he makes a bunch of money off these guys. Some of them come back to rob him, or somebody does. Somebody comes up in the shadows and tries to rob him. But this dude, Fallon Munson, who's like aristocratic and very sort of cold and uptight looking from the beginning, he rescues Johnny because he has this walking cane thing with a switch blade that comes out of it. And they start talking. And one of the I guess, dog whistles in the film, if you go with the everybody's bisexual and they're sleeping with each other. Angle is that Johnny makes a comment to ballon that he's living. A gay life. I'm like, Well, I mean, okay, maybe that would be awfully literal, but okay, sure, maybe so after this rescue, after Munson runs the robbers off, he tells Johnny that there's this illegal casino, but it's high class, it's very she, she. And he's like, You should go and see if you can win some money, but don't cheat. You're not going to be able to bring your own weighted dice. You're not going to be able to bring your own rigged card decks. You're going to have to to play it for real. But you should go. You'll need a suit and tie, but you should go. So he gets out there and he wins at blackjack by card counting. So he's like doing the Rain Man routine. He gets taken to see the casinos owner. Kills the freeze. It's like you were told to go out there, but don't cheat, and you cheated. And so here we are. So he gets taken to see the casinos owner, and he's expecting some like, big burly, stereotypically mafia dude, but the owner turns out to be this ball and Munson guy so Farrell talks Munson into hiring him. He, like, smooth talks him and does the whole Well, I know how the game is played. Wouldn't you want me here? It's a little bit like those hackers, you know, like they hack into somebody's website, and then they get a job working for the agency, because they're like, who better to protect you than somebody who has already breached the system. I know where your weaknesses are, and I know how the bad guys think it's that kind of thing. So he's like, Hey, I know how people cheat. I know how it's done. So don't you think you should hire me and make me your casino manager? Because I know, I know all the games that get played. And so Munson agrees to this. He goes off on a trip, and he returns with this gorgeous lady named Gilda, and says that they only met each other and like, knew each other for a day and got married like within a 24 hour period, which seems incredibly sudden and impulsive, and before he had gone off, it was like he and Johnny had gotten into this good rhythm. Johnny was his right hand man. He goes off for this vacation to America or business trip, whatever it was, and then comes back with this younger, gorgeous lady. As it turns out, Johnny and Gilda have known each other from the past. They deny it in front of ball and Munson, but it's obvious to the viewer that they've got some kind of history. And ballon assigns Johnny to watch over Gilda like you're the casino manager. You're my right hand man. You make sure that nothing janky and weird goes on in my life. Well, I want you to look out over my wife. She's really hot. There's going to be dudes coming after, so you should watch out after and make sure that nobody stoops my wife. And meanwhile, Gilda is, like, pretty flamboyant in her own sexual practices, especially for that time. You want to talk about the Hollywood sensors like it's very obvious that Gilda is going out having relationships with men at all hours of the day and night, and she's being really blatant about it. And it doesn't seem that she is doing it to try to make valon, who's her actual husband, jealous. It seems like she's doing it because she wants to make Johnny jealous. Of course, he becomes more and more aggravated with the whole situation, because in his mind, it's like, okay, I took this to be a casino manager and to have a good life with this rich dude. And now I've got this lady who's my ex girlfriend. She's married to my boss, and I'm supposed to be making sure that she's not out screwing other dudes, and I'm failing miserably. Oh, and then we have history. So there's all this romantic drama on top of it. Now we see ballon, the casino owner in who's in Buenos Aires. Let's don't forget that all this is in Argentina. He gets visited by two German mobsters. Apparently, their organization, whatever it was, whatever kind of organization they had, wink had financed some kind of tungsten business or some kind of tungsten monopoly, and they put everything in ball and Munson's name because they didn't want to be connected to it. But now that World War Two has ended, they've decided that they want their tungsten monopoly back and they want it back in their own name, but Balan Munson doesn't want to transfer the ownership to them. All right. So then we get into this other complication, where there's this police detective named obergon who is spying on Val and Munson and the German mobsters and their tungsten monopoly, and he's trying to get information from Johnny, since Johnny's the right hand man, but Johnny doesn't know anything. About that part of what Munson is doing. He knows about the casino and he knows about Gilda, but he doesn't know about all this shady mess with German mobsters and a tungsten cartel. So there's this Carnival celebration, and the Germans come back to the casino to shake him down to shake ball and down ballon shoots them and manages to kill one of them. So Johnny tries to get Gilda off somewhere that's safe. He doesn't want her to get killed in this melee. They go back to balance house, and they have their little kind of lovers tiff about who done, who wrong when they were together, and they're like, I hate you. Well, I hate you more. And then they kiss. So we're in kind of a hate screwing situation. The passion is there, whether it's love or whether it's hate, the passion is clearly there. They hear the front door slam after they've done all of this, and then they realize that ballon has overheard them, and Johnny goes after him because he feels guilty and is open for interpretation. Why does he feel guilty? Because he had been in a relationship with ballon? Does he feel guilty because that's his boss and he doesn't want his job to end like what's motivating the guilt.

Ballon gets into a private plane and takes off, but the plane explodes and it goes into the sea, and they assume that ballon has committed suicide or he's been in some terrible accident, but he did it because he was upset that Johnny and Gilda had a thing going on and, oh, this was just a tragedy. What we know as the viewer that Johnny and Gilda don't know is that Munson had coordinated the whole damn thing. He parachutes to safety. Johnny doesn't know that ballon is still alive. Gilda doesn't know either. So Gilda, of course, inherits Valens estate, and then immediately, I mean, immediately, Johnny and Gilda get married. I mean, like, if the body had been found, it wouldn't have even been cold in the grave at this point. It's like an immediate marriage, and it's like, this is awfully bizarre. For two people who hate each other, they seem to have a passionate hatred, but then they're immediately getting married. But Johnny is still resentful. He still doesn't have anything resembling a normal kind of boyfriend, girlfriend, loving I care for you. Type of vibe for Gilda, it's like, I want to be with you to punish you. He goes away from her. It's like he he marries her and tries to lock her down, but then at the same time, he just goes off from her to continue living his own life. He becomes like ballon in that he has her followed. He takes his right hand man, who's now his casino manager, and tells his manager to stalk Gilda, watch her all the time, don't let her have sex with other men. Gilda tries to leave, but every time she tries to leave, she's unsuccessful, because she's got stalkers. She's got dudes watching her every move. The detective Obregon is able to confiscate the casino from Johnny for legal reasons, and he tells Johnny that actually Gilda was just play acting. She never really was sleeping around with all of these guys. She wasn't cheating on ballon when he was alive. She hasn't been cheating on Johnny. This is just an act that she's putting on, probably for attention, probably for love. She may be going about it in the wrong way. But, you know, she's trying to get attention from these guys. So Johnny tries to reconcile with her, and they talk about going back to the US. However, ballin Munson reappears this very soap opera, like dude fakes his own death and comes back right for us to have the end of the movie here, ballon reappears and explains that he faked his suicide or faked his accidental death. He tries to kill Johnny and Gilda, but one of the casino workers stabs him in the back, and then when the detective Obregon sees what's happened, Johnny tries to take the blame for the murder, but obergon says, well, Balan Munson was already declared legally dead. We can't charge anybody for his murder, because how do you murder a dead man so Farrell gives obergon Some incriminating documents about the cartel and all of this stuff from money. Safe, and then he and Gilda reconcile, and you get a little bit of a happy ending, I guess, as happy and ending as you can get for a movie this odd like, hey, let's, let's try to work this out with each other. Let's go back to America together. Let's, let's just consider this time in Buenos Aires to be a blip, and let's go on with our lives. Let's try to be better. So as I mentioned, the prevailing interpretation in modernity is that this was some kind of bisexual love triangle, that ballon was cruel and cold and some kind of weird sexual sadist, Johnny was caught in the middle because he was having sex with Gilda, but then he was also having sex with ballon, and then ballon and Gilda were having sex because they were married. And this gets very Jerry Springer and very complicated. When, to me, I really think that theories about who was bisexual and who was having sex with who, it's window dressing and it's fluff. It distracts people from what, in my opinion, the film Gilda is actually about, okay, had to stop and take a sip of water. My voice is wanting to go on me. I don't want to bury my thesis here. I personally believe that Gilda is about the Nazis, and it's about fascism, and it's about what that kind of ideology does to the people who participate in it. One obvious piece of evidence for this is the character of ball and Munson. Let's just take a step back for a second. You have a man who, quite likely is a German expat who's gone off to Argentina, and he's running some kind of illegal casino that's controlled by a group of Nazis running a tungsten cartel. And after world war two ends, they're like, Well, hey, we want our cartel back, because now we have a little bit more freedom to do what we want. That doesn't, to me, suggest that ballon is completely clueless about what's going on. Johnny may have been, Gilda may have been, but I don't think that ballon was. I also don't think that the story is about whether or not Balin was gay or bisexual. To me, his sexuality really doesn't enter into the picture. If we think about Balin as a not a Nazi expat, then we get a completely different vibe, the sex, the who might have been sleeping with who and, oh, these two people have history. It's not about the sex part of it. Think about some of the symbolism. Okay, you have Val and Munson, this aristocratic type who shows up on the docks at the precise moment that Johnny needs a bailout, and he has these gloves. He's like a stereotypical elegant villain. He has these gloves, and he has this walking stick with a hidden switch blade. So the whole dynamic there with his costuming and the way he's presented to us. To me, it reeks of things like sterile, control, detachment and a refusal for him to dirty his own hands. Now he's going to orchestrate the bloodshed, but he's not going to actually get his hands dirty, and I think he's the type of of character that he's not interested in. Sex. Sex is messy, sex is human, sex is vulnerable. I think what ballon wants is control, subservience. He wants Johnny to devote his life, not because he's wanting to have sex with Johnny, but because he wants a devotee, he wants an acolyte, you will give yourself over to me because I say so. It's about power and absolute control. What I've written in my notes watching this film is I don't think it's about whether ballon is gay or bisexual. I think he's just a fucking sadist, and I stand by that interpretation. So let's think about that sadism as opposed to sexuality. And I'm not talking about sexual sadism. I'm not talking about Marquis de Saad kind of behavior where all of this is taking place, making. It. You have ballon marrying Gilda, not because he loves her, but because he wants to break her. He wants to control her, to dominate her, not sexually, but in every possible way. I'm going to put you in a cage, Gilda, who lives in a gilded cage, think about it. I want to take this beautiful woman

and make her life very, very small.

He rescues ballon, rescues Johnny in order to own him. And when Johnny thinks, Well, I'm playing this rich guy by working my way into a cushy job. Oh, it's anything but a cushy job. And you had to know that valen was already playing that 4d chess. He knew what Johnny was going to propose. That's why he told him about the casino. Why in the hell would you find some drifter at the docks and be like, Hey, I heard there's an illegal casino, but you better not cheat out there. What do you think is going to happen? That's like telling somebody, Hey, there's a really raunchy movie at the cinema, and it's pretty gross, so I don't think you should go. People are going to beat the door down if you tell them that. It's like Eric Cartman in Cartman land. All you have to do is use a little reverse psychology, which is what Fallon does to Johnny and you have ballon running a criminal empire, not necessarily for the money, but for the ritual of power. Like, yes, I'll allow Nazis to put a tungsten cartel in my name. I'll sit out here and run an illegal casino, not necessarily because I'm worried about the money that I'm making, but because I want to have power, I want to be the spider with my little web and have all of these different flies that I've caught. To me, this is much more disturbing than a love triangle. Anybody can write a story about a love triangle, but you start thinking about Johnny and Gilda as being two people probably broken in their own way, and they're trying to survive under the thumb of this fucking Nazi who doesn't himself have a broken heart. He seems to have a heart that's not there. And I think that Gilda is about this kind of fascist rot, even if it's dressed in fancy clothing, and it seems to be running a business. Underneath the surface, it's just very dark and disgusting. So to me, you have this sadistic exile with an authoritarian mindset. You have a woman who's treated as property, as a thing, an object to own, Gilda in the gilded cage. She's not a companion, she's not a wife or a girlfriend. She's a thing, an object. And then you have this drifter, this gambler who's torn between guilt and lust and loyalty and basic necessities, who evolves into, or, I should say, devolves into the very monster that he once obeyed himself. Ah, think about that with those fucking Nazi bastard I was just following orders. I mean, I didn't really do anything myself. I would just my commanding officer told me to do it. Think about how many times we heard that so called defense. I was just following orders. It wasn't me, it wasn't my idea. I was just doing as a soldier what I felt like I had to do. And that's what happens with Johnny. He turns into the same kind of sadist. This is one of the things that I find so diabolical about Nazi and fascist ideology, is the way that it spreads like a disgusting poison. It's like an evil cancer that corrupts everything that it comes into contact with. Johnny becomes the very monster. He goes and gets his right hand man after he thinks Balin is dead and says, I've married Gilda. I'm not going to sleep with her. I'm not going to be around her. I'm going to live separately from her. But you better watch her and make sure that she doesn't sleep with anybody else, because, God forbid that she finds somebody who actually loves and cares about her that might want to give her a decent life. The sadism, the poison has spread. Johnny becomes ballon part two, and I feel like that's how fascism works. You have a normalization of cruelty. You have a system that rewards obedience and loyalty, and you have a system that replace replaces real love and tenderness, real relationships that have meaning with hierarchy. It's like Johnny becomes numb. He becomes hollow after being around Fallon. Here's another piece of evidence that I would offer you. The film, ballin has a noticeable scar across his face. This was very common within the inner circle of Nazis. You may remember figures like Kurt Blom. He was tried at Nuremberg, I think, in the doctor's trial, and he was accused of practicing euthanasia and doing sadistic experiments on humans. Now, of course, here we go with the defense. Here we go. He said that he had been ordered to do it, that in 1943 he was ordered to experiment with plague vaccines

on concentration camp prisoners.

That was his so called defense.

He was a director of the Nazi biological warfare program,

and his field was virology.

Now if you're thinking, Well, you said that he was tried at Nuremberg, so surely there was justice. Surely he was convicted. If he was injecting plague into concentration camp victims and leaving them to suffer horribly. Surely he was convicted? Right? No, no, because you see, that's not how fascism fucking works. He was acquitted, and later employed by Uncle Sam. He was and you can you can find this information documented, please. You can go and look at Stephen kinser's book. Poisoner in chief bloom was hired by Sydney Gottlieb to work on MK Ultra other than how goddamn horrific that is. Why am I bringing it up? Kurt Blum had a scar, a prominent scar across his face, which came from a fencing duel. The author Andy Jacobson has talked at length about how these Nazis in their younger years, would get into fencing duels, and They prided themselves on those facial scars, and they would pack those facial scars with horse hair so they would heal hard. They didn't want the scar to heal and be hardly visible. They wanted it to be prominent. They wanted it to be visible. You may also remember another prominent Nazi one, Otto Skorzeny, who was one of Hitler's right hand men active in the German SS and the Waffen SS. He was part of the raid that rescued Benito Mussolini from captivity. There's a famous photo of the two of them like chilling together after the rescue attempt. It's like, Oh, my God, this is just disgusting. You may be thinking, well, all right, if he was Hitler's right hand man, he was high up in the ss. He was responsible for rescuing Mussolini. Surely he went to justice. No, of course, he didn't. He didn't die till 1975 and he died in Spain. It's been said that he was instrumental in the rat lines. He had his own kind of escape routes where he would help Nazis to make it to South America. Oh, wait, South America, I told you. Buenos Aires, Argentina, the film is not set there by accident, allegedly, in fact, scores any was an advisor to Argentinian President Juan Peron, and also, allegedly he was having an affair with Ava Peron. So also, he was a noted fencer, and he had a dramatic, very pronounced dueling scar on his face. I just, in my opinion, which could be wrong. I just don't think that Gilda is about a weird bisexual love triangle, and that's it. It's about what happens when people all get together who shouldn't be together and have some kind of weird hate fucking relationship? Superficially, sure, I can see that argument. But I really, in my bones, feel that this is a story about fascism. It's about Nazi ideology. It's about the kind of poison and sadism that spreads. Because we see it happen from ballon, you know this, presumably German expat Nazi with a fucking dueling scar going across his face, who rescues Johnny and then turns Johnny into another version of him, so that Gilda is the victim in all of this, not saying that she was a perfect character. Her by any means, not saying that she wasn't trying to inflame the situation for attention, merely that she was treated a human being, treated as an object, as a thing to be stuffed into a cage, a human treated lower than a farm animal.

That sounds a lot like Nazi ideology to me.

Come to your own conclusions, as always, watch the film. Decide for yourself what you think. And I would really invite you, if you have seen the movie before, go back with the things that I'm telling you. Keep them in mind and see if you don't come to a similar conclusion once we put aside the sex and the window dressing and who's zooming who and who's with who, think about it through this lens and reinterpret stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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