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Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

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.

This Director is OK as a director and has directed some great films, but is generally not so good as a writer. This one is spectacularly bad. He did write and direct the very successful "People will talk", but that had originally been written as a play by someone else, so he was really mainly being a director. Also, "Barefoot" was an inside Hollywood story by a Hollywood insider, and so perhaps he lost his objectivity. They say that autobiographies are nearly always bad.

I've long been a fan of Humphrey Bogart. Growing up in the sixties provided me with ample opportunity to see his films since back then VHS stations had classic films as their staple. Even with that being the case I didn't have the chance to see them all or even most of them. Thank goodness for the invention of video and later disc. Because of that I now have the chance to see things I missed like this feature.Opening with the funeral of a movie star the movie features Bogart as Harry Dawes, a down on his luck director who's been teamed up with a producer new to the business, Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens). Kirk is a man with too much money and too little know how. To support him he has PR man Oscar Muldoon (Edmund O'Brien) on hand to kiss his ring and do as he's told. It was a performance that won O'Brien an Oscar.One night they come across a flamenco dancer named Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner) in a small club while scouting locations. Having caught his eye Kirk wants her for the movie even if she has no experience. Except that she speaks to no one.Harry tracks her down to the small apartment where she lives with her family. There he convinces her to join the team and from there she achieves stardom. Maria and Harry remain friends but to Kirk she remains a possession. She leaves him to be with a wealthy South American named Alberto Bravano just to spite Kirk but eventually leaves him as well. It isn't until she meets Count Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini (Rossano Brazzi) that she finds love but there is a secret there that remains hidden until her death.All of this might seem like a spoiler but most going into the film know the story already. Even the blurbs on disc covers discuss most of it. It isn't the beginning to end tale that is the main focus here but the way the story unspools that holds the viewer's interest. Some have called the story weak and found it boring, others praise it for its simplicity and straightforward telling of the tale. As for myself I found it tedious at moments but entertaining on the whole.Bogart isn't used as much as I would have liked to have seen him, especially since he's a name above the title here. One has to assume that was to create a draw for the film as he was still a box office presence at the time. Still his performance is a subtle one that displays his abilities quite well. Gardner is a sight to behold as well, showing she had more talent than given credit for over the years.In the end it's one of those movie that talks about the tragedies that befall those in the film business without trying to make it appeal for sympathy of those involved on the seedier side of things. It's entertaining and a piece of film history to be enjoyed.Twilight Time presents the film in the best way possible but what else would we expect? Extras include an isolated score track, audio commentary with film historians Julie Kirgo and David Del Valle, a stills gallery from the David Del Valle Archive and the original theatrical trailer. Once more pressings of this were limited to just 3,000 copies so if interested pick one up now.

. . . 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.