The filmmaker had done something similar with All About Eve, giving us a powerful female character (passionately incarnated by Bette Davis) struggling to retain her hard-earned place as a star of the New York, New York theater. Here, though, Mankiewicz retained his affection for the cultural institution he was dissecting. Even his villains, the rabidly ambitious Eve (Anne Baxter), and her cohort, the withering critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), are fully rounded personages, their flaws grounded in their damaged psyches and ultimately balanced by their talents and their dangerous charm. The Barefoot Contessa, on the other hand, is a far bleaker affair—not unnaturally, given that Mankiewicz was merely an observer of the theater world and a deeply involved participant in the Hollywood studio system.
That fate derives, in part, from Maria's character—undeniably bold for its era. She's natively intelligent, able to hold her own with the intellectually inclined Harry; she's also an admirably straightforward version of the shrewd peasant-woman, determined to keep herself grounded, quite literally: she tells Harry that she feels "afraid in shoes" and would rather keep her feet "in the dirt." Metaphorically, of course, this is also a reference to her sexual #tastes and #needs. The very fact that she has them is daring—and Mankiewicz goes so far as to suggest that her natural #desires are what undo her in the end. Notably, many people felt that this sexy, unashamed protagonist was based on Gardner, herself (who was the daughter of a North Carolina sharecropper and notoriously unapologetic about her many affairs); Mankiewicz would say that in fact, he had in mind Margarita Cansino, a dancer who rose to sex-symbol status as Rita Hayworth, and married a Prince, Aly Khan.
All grist for the mill; but on screen, Maria Vargas is a curious creature. Even as she prides herself on her sense of honor and talks about yearning for a man "you can look at in the daylight," she moves from #Hollywood to #Europe as the apparent concubine of the revoltingly corrupt Bravano (Marius Goring, so adorable in Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes, so malevolent here), a South American oligarch. The writer-director is quick to let us know that Maria doesn't actually sleep with this swine—"Bravano quit like a dog the first time Maria said no," we're told—but she allows people to think he's had her, so really, aren't we parsing here? Further, she spends her time hanging with Bravano and "the International Set" on the #Riviera, where "they gather the way a fungus does on a tree." It's hard to see how this is in any way admirable.
Although it does, naturally, serve the plot, allowing this barefoot Cinderella to meet her Prince—or, actually, a Count: the alternately suave and gravely mysterious Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini, incarnated by the very beautiful Rossano Brazzi. From the moment he sees her, dancing—barefoot, of course—a kind of #flamenco in a #gypsy camp, the Count is obsessed: this is the life force he requires to bring back his dying family line. And yet, ironically, that's impossible, because he has a dreadful secret, which he somehow manages to keep from Maria until their wedding night: thanks to a ghastly war wound, he's impotent—Jake Barnes disease. His compassionate sister (sympathetically played by the great Valentina Cortese, billed here as "Cortesa") is horrified that her brother would inflict this "most senselessly cruel and destructive thing" on the unsuspecting Maria. But once again, Maria is exploited by the very people who claim to care about her. Even her pal Harry (and Bogart is really wonderful in his uneasiness here), suspecting that there's something wrong, does nothing to stop her from running straight into the arms of #disaster.
Maria's attempted solution, once she learns the truth, leads, of course, to the tragedy we've known was coming all along; the film begins, after all, at her #funeral, with various men in her life taking turns at narrating her story. This seems particularly meaningful: we really see Maria only through the eyes of the men around her. She is completely #objectified, presented only by way of the male gaze, with no opportunity to speak for herself. And so she remains the ultimate #mystery.
Adding significantly to this aura of strange beauty is The Barefoot Contessa's stunning cinematography, brought to us by one of the great masters, Jack Cardiff. Best known for his extraordinary Technicolor work with Powell & Pressburger (A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes), Cardiff had recently shot another film starring Gardner, 1951's Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, a genuinely magical piece of cinematic enchantment. Here, as there, he photographs her tenderly, but also with a certain detachment, as if she is already the marble statue that ultimately represents her: a work of art, yet hardly human. Contessa's score, by the great Mario Nascimbene, has the same effect: it's warm, voluptuous, but somehow distancing. This is, finally, a film that seems to focus less on a real woman than on a "legend."
That is the sadness of Gardner's #character—and perhaps, in #life, of Gardner, herself. Writer-director Mankiewicz seemed to have an inkling of this: at one point, he has the Count's compassionate sister fervently assert, "She's a living woman—have you thought for a moment about her?" For a moment, perhaps, seems to be the answer— but no more. The Barefoot Contessa in some sense seems to commit the same #sin: as #intelligent and #magisterial and stately as it is—and it is—it also gazes down upon its characters from a great height.
— Julie Kirgo
CAST:
Humphrey Bogart ... Harry Dawes
Ava Gardner ... Maria Vargas
Edmond O'Brien ... Oscar Muldoon
Marius Goring ... Alberto Bravano
valentina cortese ... Eleanora Torlato-Favrini (as Valentina Cortesa)
Rossano Brazzi ... Count Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini
Elizabeth Sellars ... Jerry
Warren Stevens ... Kirk Edwards
Franco Interlenghi ... Pedro Vargas
Mari Aldon ... Myrna
Alberto Rabagliati ... Proprietor
Enzo Staiola ... Busboy
Maria Zanoli ... Maria's Mother
Renato Chiantoni ... Maria's Father
Bill Fraser ... J. Montague Brown
John Parrish ... Mr. Max Black
Jim Gérald ... Mr. Blue (as Jim Gerald)
Diana Decker ... Drunken Blonde
Riccardo Riolo ... Gypsy Dancer
Tonio Selwart ... Pretender
Margaret Anderson ... Pretender's Wife
Gertrude Flynn ... Lulu McGee
John Horne ... Hector Eubanks
Bessie Love ... Mrs. Eubanks
Robert Christopher ... Eddie Blake (as Bob Christopher)
Anna Maria Padoan ... Chambermaid (as Anna Maria Paduan)
Carlo Dale ... Chauffeur
