The Barefoot Contessa
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Movie Reviews of The Barefoot Contessa
Movie Review: Gardner Smolders, But Mankiewicz Misses with a Portrait of a Rita Hayworth-Like Star
Summary: 3 Stars
Ava Gardner. God love her. She almost makes Angelina Jolie look like a mousy schoolgirl. However, her startling beauty and intense sensuality are not enough to overcome the deficiencies of this overripe 1954 melodrama. All the signs looked promising since the credentials behind this production are impressive. Writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz just had a one-two punch winning back-to-back double Oscars for writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives and his indisputable high watermark, All About Eve, and Humphrey Bogart was at a career peak with The African Queen and The Caine Mutiny. Moreover, Mankiewicz chose the lethal combination of the movie industry and the international jet set as his vitriolic target this time. Nonetheless, much like Rob Marshall's recent adaptation of Nine, the movie simply lacks propulsion in the narrative flow and the characters any real depth to give the viewer a valid reason to engage in the fanciful story apparently based on Rita Hayworth's checkered life.
With a rather affected accent, Gardner plays Maria Vargas, a beautiful Spanish dancer discovered in a Madrid nightclub by a megalomaniacal Howard-Hughes-like tycoon, Kirk Edwards. She despises him almost immediately, but she does connect with one of his cohorts, a has-been writer/director named Harry Dawes, who convinces her to do a screen test. No romance develops between Maria and Harry but rather an abiding friendship that leads to international stardom after only three movies. Meanwhile, love escapes her but not tabloid scandal as her father stands trial for killing her mother. A convenient affair with Alberto Bravano, a South American bon vivant, follows, but their mutual manipulation seals the fate of the relationship. Maria finally meets the man of her dreams, Count Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini, and all's right with her world until a humiliating secret threatens to shatter everything.
The framing device of the funeral makes the resolution of the storyline all too clear, and the recurring use of flashbacks and voiceovers will be familiar to anyone who has seen Mankiewicz's two earlier classic films. Gardner is luscious to look at, especially in one shipboard scene where she throws a towel aside as everyone gawks at her beauty, but she even seems lost by some of the script machinations. Bogart plays Harry with the right jaundiced tone, but there is only so much he can do as an observer of the action and simply hands the picture to Gardner. Warren Stevens, Marius Goring (The Red Shoes), and Rosanno Brazzi (Summertime) play their accustomed types adequately, but the one true scene-stealer is Edmond O'Brien as mouthy agent Oscar Muldoon constantly wiping the sweat off his brow (naturally he is the one who won an Oscar). Master craftsmen Jack Cardiff (Black Narcissus) is responsible for the luxuriant camerawork here. There are no extras on the 2001 DVD other than the original theatrical trailer.
Movie Review: Could have been better
Summary: 3 Stars
There might be a good movie in here somewhere with some serious editing of the script. I'm not sure if it was actually very, very long or if it just seemed that way.
On the plus side, there are the stars: Ava Gardner is spectacular looking in a 1950's movie-star way and she gets to wear a lot of glamorous clothes, including some snazzy one-piece swim suits. Humphrey Bogart plays his usual wiser-than-anyone-else-in-the-film self and he does it well. When he, as a writer-director, meets her, as a Spanish cabaret dancer, in her dressing room, there is an immediate sense that these two are in the same league, whereas the others are second-rate background characters. If this connection had been developed into a romance the movie might have had some sizzle.
But the Bogie character has a sensible, boring girl back home and Ava goes on from one rich cad to another until she finally her Prince Charming. Since the opening scene shows her funeral, we know that she's not going to fare well and it's only a matter of seeing how she comes to her demise. Perhaps if someone else had played the Italian Count/Prince Charming, her decision might have been more understandable. Apparently Rossano Brazzi, who plays him, was a hot item at the time but I never understood his appeal. He's not handsome, is rather stocky, has no facial expressions and delivers his lines in a terribly wooden way. Maybe the heavy Italian accent is what some find charming.
My ending to the story would be to have Bogie grab Ava halfway through the film and say "Cut the crap; you belong with me!" Bogie's script-girl girlfriend could have one of the vapid rich guys and everyone would live happilly ever after.
There are the usual colorful shots of the French Riviera that were so appealing in 50's films but they are not worth the price of this picture. See "To Catch a Thief" instead. Or anything else.
Movie Review: Mediocre
Summary: 3 Stars
On the positive side, the color and clarity of the movie are good for a older movie, almost not seeming old at all in that way. Ava Gardner looks gorgeous.
I read all the glowing reviews of this movie here before buying it, but I was dissappointed in it. I was bored by the predictable arc of the story, the cartoonish stereotypical characters (the evil abusive millionaire, the sweaty faced agent), and the long drawn out conversations which could have been edited down 80% without losing much. The entire story is improbable and not in any way adequately developed - a bar dancer suddenly becoming a huge star, yet we never see her dance in the bar, and never see her act in her "movie".
Garnder is not convincing in her role at all, especially with the fake spanish accent. She is beautiful but she lacks the pizaz and confidence of a Monroe, Taylor, or Bardot. I am no fan of Bogart but he comes across as decent uncle-like figure - which Ava ascertains by talking to him for 60 seconds after he barges into her room as a stranger. But he is so terribly miscast as a filmmaker, that I could never really even accept it. The big scene with the agent on the phone is such an obvious acting job of the actor yelling to the audience its painful to watch. There is nothing genuine in any way about this movie's story or the characters playing it.
To me the only value in it, is in a specimen of early 50's Hollywood. If you like old movies then fine. But this is not up to snuff by modern standards at all. I find myself wondering why there are shadows on every wall in an interior room and hair always lit (due to the multiple stage lights used for filming). Its also amusing to see the subtle sexism (e.g. the ease in which men put their hands on Gardner and talk to her like a child). The only curiosity is the strangely anti-mother twist to it. By the way what is a "bent kopec"?
Movie Review: Ava Gardner acted with the distracted air of a woman searching for something she cannot quite define...
Summary: 3 Stars
Ava Gardner replaced Rita Hayworth, in the late forties and early fifties, as Hollywood's leading love goddess... She was less sparkly than Rita, and her reign, coming just before Marilyn Monroe's, was a short one, but she had certain symbolic virtues that were not to be denied... There is indeed an animal quality about her sensuality... She is a proud, restless tigress, sure of her powers, yet confused about their proper uses...
"The Barefoot Contessa," opens at the rain-drenched gravesite of actress Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner) where the people who were involved with her recount how she arrived at this stern destination... They include Bogart as a film director and Edmond O'Brien, who won an Academy Award for his performance as a loud-mouthed press agent...
Bogart relates how he was hired to write a screenplay featuring a new glamor girl... He and a rude millionaire interested in movie-making (Warren Stevens) discover Maria dancing in a Madrid cabaret and choose her as their leading lady... She becomes an overnight sensation and helps Bogart regain his lost stature... The remainder of this overlong film then turns to pretentious soap-opera, building to a climax in which Maria and a boyfriend are in face of an impotent husband...
The film was populated by harsh, self-indulgent, and unsavory men who all came off second-best to Bogart, a cynical but comparatively likable character...
The plot had strong cinematic possibilities, but the script by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who also directed, had ambiguous passages, overly ornate, and ultimately tiresome...
Movie Review: The Barren Contessa
Summary: 3 Stars
More a film of thought and sharp-edged dialogue or speechifying than plot or character. The shifting POVs across the Contessa's admirers define the sprawling and overlong narrative. Bogart's removal as a love interest diminishes the possible chemistry that might have ignited the film. What we get instead, is Maria Vargas being pursued by a series of ruthless and sullen rich men without a grain of real or palpable passion. In fact, all the leading men are rendered impotent in one way or another, fueling an unsettling uneasiness that grinds us along. With Ava and Bogart as two aloof characters at the film's center, our attention turns to the churn of ambience and mise-en-scene that sets the historical framework, providing some insight into the vacuity of the international set. With it's misanthropy and cynicism so unrelenting, it's a tough go that leaves a chill in the air colder than the death of its leading lady.