Of all the femmes fatales of the Forties, Rita Hayworth's Gilda is perhaps the most vivid in the memory. Every man's image of the immediate post-war sex symbol par excellence, she glides sinuously through a story of deceit, danger and ambition for power. The ambition is that of her husband, magnetically played by George Macready, a scarred death's head of a man who runs a sumptuous gambling casino in Buenos Aires, and aims to become the world's most powerful tycoon. The fly in the ointment is Johnny (Glenn Ford), the tycoon's junior partner, who was once Gilda's lover. Director Charles Vidor had worked with all three principal actors in previous films, and here he uses them as a team to produce an atmosphere loaded with eroticism and menace. Macready's white house, a sort of Gatsby mansion gone to the devil, is, with the casino it contains, an art director's dream. The over-dark shadowed streets contrast with this over-bright palace of sin. Seldom has an atmosphere of decadence been so cleverly suggested. But it's Miss Hayworth you'll remember, in the film that made her the siren: whether singing Put the Blame on Mame, Boys, or stripping off long black gloves in an unforgettable night-club scene.