Humphrey Bogart & Ava Gardner in THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (1954)

The Barefoot Contessa is all about how men perceive a woman, who they indeed put on a pedestal and all but say she brings it on herself because, darn it, it's Ava Gardner after all, to the point where the writer/director Joseph Mankiewicz breaks up much of the structure of the film between three men who see her in the rise and not so much fall but disillusionment of the so-called fairy tale that has been laid out for her life. I've read some criticism that it being all from men, that we don't get her perspective or anywhere near the narration from Maria, makes the film dated and even perhaps sexist, that a woman filmmaker would have done more.

They may be right on the last score, but I would put to the former point that Mankiewicz means for this to be exactly about how all the men she encounters in her life (save perhaps for her father who, oh the ultimate irony, killed Maria's mother because... the radio got broken I guess, but hey she argues in his favor and he gets off, part of the fairy tale part of her life in an uncanny respect), and the controls put on her, except maybe by the director played by Bogart himself, are like this prism that she has to act or behave a certain way to be acceptable.

That is, until she can't because she finds love - or what she that this light seems to be the thing that will kick her out of the blasted darkness that other men, not least of which two competing uber-wealthy douchebags (one of which inspired by Howard Hughes) have kept her in since she was discovered as a dancer... and naturally the men who sought her out didn't even see what she could do as a dancer!

I think what I mean to get at here is The Barefoot Contess is extremely satisfying cynical Hollywood entertainment carrying some context from the fact that it comes from Mankiewicz post All About Eve and Bogart post In a Lonely Place. This isn't quite as biting or masterful as the former film (and I'll get to my one major issue soon), and I can see why Bogart took this role on even after he already played perhaps his most devastating/pitch-black tragic character in Lonely Place; this man has been broken down a peg or two by the industry, but where he's at when he meets Maria is a place where he's trying to be not as low down and of what his reputation precedes him as. What kinds of films he makes don't matter, just how he lifts Maria's sense of herself up (that comment he gives her about "the moon is your key light" is one of the best lines about cinema as beauty I've ever heard) and that as he sees her at key moments of her life in ascension and bewilderment and peace and sadness as this Mega Star.

While Bogart as Harry Dawes is, what else, world-weary cool but unflinching in honesty damn Bogart in the part, only a little more compelling at listening as an actor than he is delivering the juicy Mankiewicz monologues, Gardner has the toughest part to play here to show some inner life and joys and conflicts as this seemingly perfect image of a movie star, and it's a really strong performance that she can hold her own (of course there's more one could get to about a white actress playing Latino, but I'll leave those with more authority to go there, such as Karina Longworth in her book Seduction where she writes about this film and the connections to Hughes and stars in his orbit and directors he controlled, but I digress kind of).

As for the other perspectives aside from Dawes? This is where we see this filmmaker's strengths and mastery with language, this wonderful sense that the best of the Golden Age Hollywood writers could have in displaying fierce intelligence both intellectually and emotionally, as well as where he stumbles. Edmond O'Brian as Oscar, in an Oscar winning turn (nache), is the PR attack dog for the Not Hughes super millionaire who talks too much and that too is by design; he's he's sweaty mess of a man who can talk his way in a room to where one can tell the others have clearly heard it all before (ie when he finds out the news about Maria's parents criminal tragedy is a dark comic winner), except with Bogie he's met his match in a sense - he knows the BS Hollywood pushes just as much as him, and how a star's image can't be controlled or really dictated entirely as much as he might try... it just happens.

Less successful for me is the Italian count and his perspective, played by Brazzi. It's not that the actor is all bad in the part, he fills the suit and persona with some demur sense that befits a Count, and I love the scene where he watches Maria dance and the two connect. But he's given a lot of narration and monologues where he explains a lot, maybe too much, where less could have been more. It makes sense the Hollywood people and even the I'm The Best of the Best rich bastards talk and explain their lives and livelihoods where it become about the act of explication, but the actor isn't as believable or maybe the pouring out of the mind, heart and soul from the Count Fabrizi takes the movie into an area I'm not sure Mankiewicz makes as believable. Of course it goes in the climax into total melodrama, and then he more or less is fine (though with Gardner she is the emotional weight in *that* moment where he reveals his... physical problems to be a full lover).

But this isn't too much for me to take away calling Barefoot Contessa a pretty remarkable achievement, even something close to a flawed masterpiece. It's all down to that script which, by and large (like 90% of the time) presents a strikingly perceptive look for this or any time about what the all-engulfing machine of Capitalist Patriarchy can do to people, not just the women but the men too; of course it's also glamorous and beautifully shot (thank you much Jack Cardiff), and yet the filmmaker doesn't hide at all his to put it lightly mixed emotions about the industry he's playing in, where an empty husk "producer" can't be told how empty he is and how image constructs everyone around them.

(Screened on 35mm from a restoration via Fimm Forum NYC)

PS: it's extra fascinating that the Howard Hughes connection is in line with Gardner herself as an actor who had a relationship with Hughes (and holy crap how did I forget that aside from the Longworth book which I loved but from The Aviator as well). Maria Vargas comes from Rita Hayworth of coursr.