The Barefoot Contessa. 1954

 

Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s storied career and reputation pretty much rests on two movies “A Letter To Three Wives” in 1949 and “All About Eve” in 1950. The films were huge hits and won him back to back Oscars for writing and directing, the only director ever to do so. Both films were and still are sophisticated witty dramas with smart and funny dialogue and a big shopping bag full of memorable performances. Mankiewicz comes from a historically important family of writers including his older brother Herman who wrote the script for a little movie called “Citizen Kane”.

It’s after these two classics that for me his career fell down and bruised it’s knees with failed films both critically and at the box office. Like many of the giants of the golden age Cukor, Minnelli, Ford, Vidor, Stevens and even Hitchcock these great talents ended their careers on sorry notes with films that failed more or less with the critics and audiences alike. Still there are supporters of these films among contemporary critics and movie goers today who cherish, love and defend these films.  

Mankiewicz also petered, out ending his career with “Sleuth” and “There Was A Crooked Man”. Sleuth based on a play did well at the box office and even got him his final Oscar nomination for Directing, but I recall not liking it. His films right after “Eve” were an uneven bunch, “Julius Caesar”, “Guys and Dolls” and the Tennesse Williams horror gothic show “Suddenly Last Summer” which is famous for Katherine Hepburn spitting in Mankiewicz’s  face at the end of the filming because of his sour horrible treatment of the fragile Montgomery Clift and Liz Taylor’s white tight fitting bathing suit. I won’t go into “Cleopatra” I’ll leave that one for another day.

For now I want to focus on his 1954 film “The Barefoot Contessa” which I finally saw a short time ago.  This was another show biz film, set in Europe among the international jet setters and Hollywood among the usual suspects. The film is  supposedly based on Rita Hayworth’s life story and filtered through several back looks into the life of the fictional Maria Vargas a world famous movie star whose sparsely attended outdoor rain soaked  funeral opens the film. Maria is played by Ava Gardner who in flashbacks and voice overs most notably by Humphrey Bogart (looking tired) who plays an up and down (more down) Hollywood writer and director who is painted as sort of a hack tells how she was discovered dancing in some low rung nightclub in Madrid. Bogart becomes her mentor, friend and from what I could tell her only director. We never see her dancing and Mankiewicz handles this well by panning over the patrons in the nightclub and showing their expressions and little dramas as they watch the “invisible” Ava dancing.

This is one of the major problems with the film, as we never see why Maria/Ava becomes such a great international star. Sure Maria/Ava is truly gorgeous and Gardner was indeed one of the most beautiful stars in the history of film but in this movie she is way over her head. The camera loves her, and so do I, but she was never known for her great acting skills and sadly she keeps loosing her Spanish accent. We do later in the film finally get to see her dance in a scene doing a pathetic sort of flamingo in a gypsy camp but we never see or feel why she became such a big international movie star. There are no clips of her acting and Mankiewicz uses big time movie premieres to show her popularity, which is not enough. Yes celebrity can hinge on looks and beauty alone, but the truly great transcending glamorous stars have also had magical acting powers think Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren . Another film that same year about a rising movie star also directed by an aging director from the golden years of Hollywood “A Star Is Born” has a lot in common with “Contessa” except we totally buy the rise of the star because she is played by one of the great singer-entertainers of the 20^th Century and we get to see her do her stuff.   

The film is also misogynistic, the ads and posters boasted “The World’s Most Beautiful Animal” to describe the character that Gardner plays and she is indeed treated like an animal. She is stalked, caged,(metaphorically)  trained, prodded, shaped and finally destroyed by a collection of nasty men including the sleezy Howard Hughes like producer played by an oily Warren Stevens. All the women that come and go with the exception of Bogart’s wife acted by Elizabeth Sellers are treated like trash, property and whores and makes for uncomfortable retrospective viewing.  There is also the loud sweaty go for PR man Oscar Muldoon played by Edmond O’Brien who won an Oscar for this obvious performance. Another comparison to this film and “A Star Is Born” is Jack Carson’s similar role as a go for studio lackey who was so much  better at this sort of impersonation than O’Brien that he wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar. Nobody played disgust and revulsion better than Carson. The film is stiff and looks it. Mankiewicz was not a great visual stylist as a filmmaker and his movies are straight up and down, up front and not personal. Just set up the scene Mank and shoot it, and even though Barefoot is lush in color (the saturated color cinematography is by the great jack Cardiff) the film looks dull and stodgy it just sits there even though it was filmed in Italy among lush surroundings and at the vast Cinecitta Studios. The final part of the film is the most ludicrous and features the handsome Rossano Brazzi as a count  who Ava marries and comes with a terrible secret that brings the film to its tragic ending. With some wonderful 50’s fashions and gowns by Fontana that is extra eye candy besides Ava.