An Exercise In Nonsense

Admirable film.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

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.

Spoiler Alerts ahead! There are so many things wrong with this film, that it's hard to know where to begin. As others have noted, the main failing is the overall tone: unrelentingly morose and downbeat. Perhaps the writers were attempting a psychological thriller like "Gilda." However, they made a crucial mistake - the leading actor, Humphrey Bogart, has no romantic relationship with the leading actress, Ava Gardner! The script goes to great pains to stress that they are just friends, and that the Humphrey Bogart character is in love with his on screen wife (a minor character played by an actress I'd never seen before.) Yawn. Meanwhile, no one can interest the Ava Gardner character until late in the film when she falls for Rossano Brazzi. Although it's hard to tell that she falls for him at all.However, they get married, and here's where the script really goes off the rails. RB fails to disclose that his junk was shot off in the War prior to their nuptials. The film just throws this cruel deception out there without comment and then seems to judge the Ava Gardner character for having to cope with it. Of course this was still the era of the Hayes Code, and another thing that the screenwriters seem to be counting on is a certain amount of naivety on the part of the audience, by assuming that the audience would think that a man would need his equipment to, um, make a woman happy. Humphrey Bogart badgers Ava Gardner, "How long was it before you couldn't stand it anymore?", I.e. go without sex? I have a feeling that couples went home in the 1950's and asked each other, ""Why didn't they just..you know...?" Ava Gardner's solution of providing her husband with a baby he can use as an heir is of course misguided, but not too implausible. But I think the script breaks down again when Humphrey Bogart fails to inform Rossanno Brazzi of his wife's good intentions by getting pregnant and just lets him think she a slut. If you have a good quality television this film will be worth watching just for how radiant Ava Gardner looks. She is stunning, especially in sunglasses and a black swimsuit. The locations in the South of France are nice to look at, too.

. . . from THE SUN ALSO RISES to SUNSET BLVD., Ava Gardner's THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA makes one yearn to see the Jennifer Coolidge version of C!NDERELLA again. At least there weren't a dozen foreigners mangling the English language in the latter flick. A color film with Noirish pretensions, THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA telegraphs its "big reveal" from miles away, and pulls all of its punches more than any ROCKY movie. It tries to be all things to all people, but ends up being a pale imitation of everything in which it chooses to dabble. Gardner's "Maria" character is way too inscrutable to follow in the footsteps of A STAR IS BORN. Viewers do not appreciate being bludgeoned with the Eurotrash metaphor of castrated nobility any more than Maria does here on her wedding night. Humphrey Bogart as Maria's confessor Harry takes an apparent mid-movie chemotherapy break, which is quite jarring, as it replaces the best thing this feature has going for it with the unintelligible gibberish of substitute voice-over narrators. THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA is a gab fest from the get-go, but at least it begins in spoken American. Oscar winner Edmond O'Brien is a hoot as the sweaty "Oscar Muldoon" PR flak, but he's not around enough to save this misfire.

The movie starts with the funeral of a relatively young woman. Her story is told in flashbacks. You keep watching because you want to know how and why she died.She is not a particularly interesting person, more a china bust with a frozen smile. She is supposedly a spectacular dancer but does only one rather embarrassing dance routine that reminded me of my mother dancing when drunk.She is surrounded by interesting people e.g. screenwriter Harry Dawes, played by a very mellow and likable Humphrey Bogart.Kirk Edwards is a gum chewing billionaire, who makes his life miserable by bullying everyone just for the fun of it.Alberto Bravano is a South American tycoon, who is perfectly candid about his own selfishness. His honesty and lack of hypocrisy makes him extremely charming.The movie makes clear how wealth and fame can most of the time get in the way of happiness. It shows how they seduce and corrupt. It pokes fun at the airhead wealthy who descend on the Riviera each year to gamble.The movie also explores jealousy, how pleasant life can be when it is in check and how miserable when it is not.It is a quite slow paced, somewhat boring movie. Not much happens. It just meanders around to its rather surprising conclusion.