Using Visual & Sound Elements to Create 3-Dimensional Space & Character Dimension
One of the most difficult challenges of the film director is composing visual and sound elements that bring three dimensional life to a one dimensional medium as well as using them to enhance and broaden the character dimensions of the players. In Charles Vidor’s classic black and white film Gilda visual and sound elements are utilized to achieve this with spectacular effect. Analyzing one scene from the film will demonstrate just how well crafted and effective it is in this manner. The scene under dissection occurs near the middle of the film and it is a scene that is a direct counter-movement to the one preceding it, both in terms of content and character. The preceding scene shows Gilda coming home from a presumed wild evening with a man other than her husband. Her husband’s right-hand man, Johnny Farrell, and Gilda have known each other previously, unbeknownst to her husband. Johnny prevents the man from escorting her companion into the house. The scene ends with Gilda mocking him with laughter as she closes the mansion door, having just exposed him for “protesting a little too much” if it is only her husband’s welfare causing his high level of concern.
The following scene completely reverses this in an action and psychological counter-movement, ending with Johnny exposing Gilda’s visit to the nightclub he runs for her husband (Ballin Mundson) as a sign she still cares for him. The scene ends with him mockingly looking at her through the glass shards of a glass wall she threw her guitar through in a peak of emotion after the exposure. The sexual and psychological tension throughout Gilda is taut but this scene shows us Gilda being vulnerable and more her real self than we have seen at any time up to this point in the film. Whereas Johnny was left vulnerable at the end of the preceding scene, Gilda is the one who is vulne...