La comtesse aux pieds nus

Was really intrigued into seeing 'The Barefoot Contessa'. Joseph L Mankiewicz was responsible for 'All About Eve', which is one of my all time favourite films, and when you have the likes of Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart and Edmond O'Brien one does expect a lot.

'The Barefoot Contessa' was disappointing. It is a long way from an awful film and has several very good things, but with such a talented cast and a director who was really good when he is in his prime it could have been so much more. Can totally see the polarising reactions on both sides, while 'The Barefoot Contessa' has a good deal to admire (more so than has been given credit for) it is not going to appeal, and has not appealed, to everybody. 1954 saw some great films, 'Rear Window', 'On the Waterfront', 'A Star is Born', 'Sabrina', 'Dial M for Murder', 'White Christmas' and '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea', 'The Barefoot Contessa' to me just isn't in the same league.

Starting with what is good about 'The Barefoot Contessa', it looks great visually with beautiful autumnal cinematography and sumptuous costumes and settings, the very meaning of extravagant. The music score from Mario Nascimbene is lush and subtly done. There are some cracking lines and there is evidence of sincerity. Was very surprised at how daring and ahead of its time it was.

Ava Gardner lives up to her glamorous "the world's most beautiful animal" image and character and is positively luminous and graceful, she is very much in her prime here. Late-career Humphrey Bogart, rightly regarded as a cultural icon who died far too soon (only three years later), is as commanding as ever and not only the best actor in the cast but also one of the film's strongest elements. Edmond O'Brien is deliciously oily and in his best moments on dynamite form. Warren Stevens is very good too.

Rossano Brazzi was the weak link however in the cast, his role has little if anything to it and the only thing Brazzi brings to it is handsome looks, everywhere else he's very wooden and dull. Mankiewicz really is not at his best in the directing, he delivers on the style but elsewhere it's pedestrian and uninspired.

His writing fares even weaker, despite some moments of sincerity and cracking lines the acerbic wit that sparkled in 'All About Eve' four years earlier does not come through enough. Most of the film is too talky and rambling, as well as overwrought, flimsy and too rehearsed. The thin and sometimes muddled story does suffer from dull pacing that rarely fires on all cylinders and an overlong length, and feels both overblown as a result of being overwritten and bland due to the lack of depth to the writing and characterisation. Despite the great efforts of the cast the characters are under-explored and don't have much to allow us to connect properly with them.

Overall, beautiful but uneven. 5.5-6/10 Bethany Cox

When a movie opens with the funeral of the main character, you know you are in for a long, sad ride. Really long, in this case – the movie clocks in at two hours. With the inevitability of a tragic death fixed at the opening, it's hard not to see the entire film through filter of sadness.

The Barefoot Contessa follows the rise, perpetual dissatisfaction and demise of a beautiful, charismatic Maria Vargas, a young Spanish woman played by Ava Gardner. A powerful wall street type turned movie backer wants her to be the new face and visits her in her small village, dragging along a PR man, the director and washed up actress. There are two narrators – a little confusing at times – but most of the movie is relayed from the perspective of Humphrey Bogart, a sad sack, world weary writer/director (in a mythical time when writers were as famous as the stars). He was great, as always, and Gardner was good but lacked oomph for someone supposedly able to set the world on fire.

I think that was due mainly to the direction, she wasn't allowed to sparkle; quite the opposite, she was prohibited from shining. The odd thing about the movie is how much of her action happened off screen. When Hollywood arrives in her village to see her dance, we only see her hands clicking castanets. When she has a screen test which dazzles jaded directors and, we don't see it. When she makes three movies, we never see her on set or even get a hint of what she was like in the movies. When she rises to the top of the celebrity mountain with legions of adoring fans, we don't see them or even understand why. In fact, all she really does is mope around and wait for her demise. The only time she is allowed to partially captivate is during an odd scene where she hand-dances at a Gypsy camp.

It must have been intentional, and added to the doomed mood throughout. Instead of the details, instead of watching a small town girl lose her innocence (though she always seemed quite confident, self-possessed and resigned to her fate) we see the outcomes -- cruel people growing crueler, the dehumanizing effect of fame and redemption for a few characters (Bogart's character finds true love after three marriages and manages to kick the booze habit for good). Mostly we see barefoot Ava, drifting through life, never able to let herself be happy, or fall in love, or enjoy success, or even laugh. And we are never really able to understand why. The opening shot shows that she is doomed and I was never able to shake that inevitability throughout.

Still well worth the time.

-- www.cowboyandvampire.come --

This sometimes slow, but interesting, movie has a number of strengths, most notably its characters, writing, and settings. The cast also features some fine performances from Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart, and Edmund O'Brien. The 'contessa' herself is undeniably the center of attention, but there is also much more to appreciate.

Gardner does well in personifying Maria, a character with an unusual mix of earthiness and innocence. The symbolic contrast between wearing shoes and going barefoot seems at first to be a rather obvious device, but as the character is developed, it gradually takes on more meaning. Gardner, with a lot of help from the Joseph Mankiewicz script, is convincing amidst Maria's changing fortunes in love and in her career.

Bogart is an ideal choice to play the director, whose own nature has an unexpected combination of world-weariness and integrity. And O'Brien gets one of his very best roles, as a press agent who is largely a parasite, but who turns out to have a couple of interesting things inside of him.

On the surface, the story is a relatively simple tale of a young 'discovery' and of what happens to her after she finds sudden fame. Yet the contrasts and conflicts among the characters, and the contrasts between them and their surroundings, make for plenty of good material. The multiple narratives and the dialogue help considerably in bringing out many of these possibilities. It's an interesting and effective movie that makes its characters come alive, and allows you to spend a couple of hours in their world.

This starts very well, more than a little reminiscent of Sunset Boulevard, with initially Humphrey Bogart as the narrator. This is probably one of Bogart's finest performances, certainly his is a stand out performance in this fairytale romance that can never have a happy end because that is where we come in, in the graveyard. Ava Gardner is good, I don't know about the claims as to her fabulous beauty, Blue Ray does her no favours, exposing the thickness of make-up but her costumes also seem most constricting and unflattering. But she puts in a good performance, especially in her scenes with Bogart. It is just a shame that the promise at the start of some Hollywood expose and an attack upon the bullying and abusive producers comes to nothing and we talk once more of Cinderella. The last act could lose twenty minutes easily and indeed I would remove the entire performance of Valentina Cortese as the Count's sister who does not help at all as we descend into an appalling Hollywood cop out ending. Remains watchable, however, for the first half, Ava's early scenes and the complete Bogart performance only a couple of years before his death.

Four years after the phenomenal All About Eve, Joseph L Manckiewicz moves away from Broadway and lands in Hollywood. Naturally, everything in Hollywood is bound to be louder, more vulgar, more shallow and more expensive and surprisingly less relatable, less credible. Ava Gardner is breathtakingly beautiful and Jack Cardiff photographs her like a goddess but that's no match for any of the exchanges between Bette Davis and Thelma Ritter in All About Eve. Here the soap opera elements dominate the tale. The Italian aristocrats as played by Rossano Brazzi and Valentina Cortese take the story for a ludicrous spin. Josseph L Manckiewicz as a writer and director makes sure the film doesn't become "The Legend Of Lylah Clare" for instance. Humphery Bogart plays the lead and I forgot to mention it. I wonder why. He's wonderful in it but the Oscar went to Edmond O'Brian for his unbearable press agent. Ava Gardner presence transformed this lurid tale into a classic and it's bound to remain so for ever.