1954 Drama
From United Artists
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Starring
Humphrey Bogart
Ava Gardner
Edmond O'Brien
Rossano Brazzi
Marius Goring
Valentina Cortese
Elizabeth Sellars
Warren Stevens
Mari Aldon
It's about a woman... one who has pulled herself up and out of the poverty of her Spanish roots to become a café society dancer, a famous movie star, a mistress/courtesan and a brief wife. She is brought to life by men... writer/director Mankiewicz and three narrators.
It is about the Hollywood movie scene although, except for an important party segment, it takes place in Europe. Mankiewicz knew a thing or two about Hollywood having battled it out for several years before and after Contessa. He won back-to-back Oscars in 1949-50 for both writing and direction of the slightly overrated A Letter to Three Wives and the exquisite All About Eve. The latter was about Broadway and the bookends were completed with this film.
Not everyone liked or appreciated The Barefoot Contessa... oh hell no they didn't. To this day, in some quarters, it is still derided. And we'll get to those things later. For now I want you to know that while it may be imperfect I just eat it up. Still. It's a bittersweet Hollywood satire, hypnotic, witty, cynical, gorgeously trashy, intelligently written with clever dialogue. Its excesses are part of its charm.
Mankiewicz said that he wrote the part of Maria Vargas for Rita Hayworth. Indeed he incorporated in the screenplay quite a number of Hayworth's own traits and several of them remain. But Hayworth wasn't available and while he looked for a replacement (considering Joan Collins along the way), his girlfriend of the moment, Linda Darnell, had first asked for the part and later begged for it. He wouldn't consider her and the decision bitterly ended their relationship.
I think Darnell and Hayworth would have brought something special to the role but as I see it, Mankiewicz struck gold with the hiring of Ava Gardner. Obviously he also included many of her traits into his writing as well and they're very obvious. This fact is one of my top reasons for liking and admiring this film. I almost want to say that Gardner was brave to let herself be exposed like this but like Maria, she wouldn't have given it a moment of thought.
Let there be no doubt Gardner is the star of the film, the only starring role. Yes, even Bogart plays a supporting role despite his top billing. She is rarely off screen while there was a long segment that he's not in at all.
There is never a moment of doubt that Maria is dead since the story opens at her funeral. (The reason why she's dead won't be revealed until the film's third chapter.) Bogart is at the funeral and narrates. He is Harry Dawes, a writer-director whose career is not as lustrous as it once was. He goes with two business associates to a cabaret to see Maria dance. The second man is Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens), out to produce his first film. He is ruthless, vengeful and not particularly talented. The third man is Oscar Muldoon (Edmond O'Brien), a brash, sweaty motormouth.
It was clever of Mankiewicz not to show Maria at all during the dance. Instead he shows the hypnotic effect she has on the faces of the many patrons watching her perform. He establishes a lasting mystery about her.
Maria is not easily wooed into becoming a movie star. In fact, at first she will not even come out of her dressing room to meet the producer, which enrages him. He is not prepared to deal with a woman as strong as she is. She tells Harry that no man has ever paid for me and no man ever will. We'll revisit that one.
Maria feels comfortable with Harry and her usual secretiveness is discarded. He tells her if you can act, I can help you. If you can't nobody can teach you. She realizes she may like the perks of the profession and agrees to make a movie but she adamantly refuses to sign a contract with the producer.
Maria and Harry form a fast friendship, a loving but platonic one. He is married (to Elizabeth Sellars) and she is with him in Europe. Maria will make three films for Harry and then no more. Interestingly, Mankiewicz made the decision to never show Maria at work as an actress. We only know that she is one.
Oscar (O'Brien) takes over some of the narration as Maria rises in the Hollywood superstructure with a new name, Maria D'Amata. It is through him that we learn much of what we do about the town and its miscreants.
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| O'Brien wins an Oscar for playing Oscar |
There are several individual scenes that I have always loved. One of them is at the Hollywood party where everyone has had too much to drink and there's just a little bit too much honesty... a word the town has never really embraced. Present is a rich Argentinian, Alberto Bravano (Marius Goring), who has an exciting verbal battle with producer Edwards (hats off to Mankiewicz for the razor-sharp dialogue, no doubt a remembrance of actual occurrences in his life). Bravano also, of course, becomes smitten with Maria who is intoxicated with the smell of his money.
Then all the showfolk are off to Monte Carlo. One of Mankiewicz's themes is about the misery and degradation of money and the disillusionment of fame and it's all brought into the foreground during this gambling segment. The audience realizes that while Maria is no longer acting, she is the live-in mistress of Bravano. Remember no man has ever paid for me and no man ever will? Well, she hasn't remembered it.
Now a seductress, she ensnares rich men. She knows they like her on their arms, particularly as they enter ballrooms at the top of a staircase with all eyes on them. She's a show pony and public appearances excite her. It's just a different kind of acting. Acquiring more and more jewels and beautiful handmade gowns is a far cry from her barefooted, dirty-faced impoverished youth. And yet she knows that young girl is still a part of her. She is agog at the power she possesses.
We observe her standing behind Bravano as he gambles and she takes a chip from his stash and quickly cashes it in and runs to a balcony and throws a wad of cash to a hunky number standing below.
Back inside at a busy table Bravano aggressively confronts Maria and when she stands up to leave, he pushes her back into the chair. That upsets Count Favrini (Brazzi) who is standing nearby. He approaches Bravano and slaps him. Maria and the count speed off into the night. He takes her to his Italian palazzo, where he lives with his sister (Valentina Cortese).
Soon Maria has fallen in love, the first time in her life. She would like to change her ways if the count asks her to marry him. A little time passes and Harry is filming in Rome. Maria goes to meet him and the old friends are joyous over seeing one another again. Maria confides that so far the romance has begun and ended with kisses on the hand. Harry is flummoxed to say the least, knowing his lady friend as he does. Is that alright with you? She says it is.
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| She wanted a real-life wedding as nice as this one |
As the wedding day is ending, Harry takes the count aside and they have one of the film's great exchanges. He says Maria has been wrapped up in a fairytale life and that she's never been in love. She's vulnerable and open to hurt. She's a child who has all her dreams wrapped up in the count. Harry says he does not want her hurt. The count thanks him but adds he doesn't know why Harry is saying those things.
As he enters his bedroom to a happily anxious countess-bride, Favrini tells Maria he had been blown apart in the war and things won't go as she'd hoped. He leaves the room and she throws herself on the bed and sobs.
A few days later she goes to see Harry and tells him everything. She has decided to stick it out, love him with all her heart and hopefully give him a child. She thinks he'll be happy that she will produce an heir for his lineage. There's a chauffeur who has assisted her. She doesn't seem to grasp that her husband, though he hasn't spoken a word about it, expects her to act as if she's been blown apart, too.
Harry thinks she's gone mad. Don't you know him? Your husband is an embittered, deeply neurotic man. She grabs her coat, they embrace and she heads out the door. He goes to the window to watch her leave and notices the count, waiting in the dark, is following her.
Harry, thinking the worst, jumps in his car and follows them both but considerably behind. He drives onto the estate and as he's peering in a window, he hears two shots out by the garages. The count has shot Maria and the employee to death. He did not learn of the baby.
The film ends as it began... at the funeral. Harry observes Oscar being there and the count and his sister are off to a side by themselves. We see he is in handcuffs and after the service he is escorted away by police.
And there is the statue of Maria at her grave. The count wanted her to pose for it and it had sat in the forecourt of his property. Cinderella's story has not ended well.
MGM made a million dollars on loaning out Gardner while she made $60,000 for her participation. She claimed she didn't mind so much because she got one of the two best roles of her career (Mogambo is the other). It catapulted her to international fame.
Despite the loveliest of relationships on the screen, Gardner did not always get along with Bogart. He took to needling her. She thought some of it had to do with his close friendship with Sinatra whom she was in the process of divorcing. She was clearly intimated by Bogart... he said that he wasn't particularly impressed with her as an actress. She felt constantly unnerved because like on most of his film sets he complained about everything. The complaints would frequently halt production, she would lose her concentration and was upset with him. She also said that he hated Italy which kept him in overdrive on grumpy. In the end, Gardner came to think Bogart's weighty presence might have had something to do with her giving a better performance.
Gardner didn't always get on with Mankiewicz either who thought teasing her was the way to get her to relax. Of course, it only served to make the notoriously insecure actress more insecure.
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| Star and director |
Gardner never played anything but herself in her many films and in this film she never did it better. Maria, too, was never anyone but herself. Neither woman ever pretended to be anything other than what they were and unapologetically so. Gardner's own life is a partial basis for the character of Maria but the actress's life was far more audacious than the character's.
I find it interesting that two of Bogie's best roles are in films in which he played screenwriters (In a Lonely Place being the other). But if he's a little looney in the latter, he couldn't be more likeable, warm and loving (and normal) than he is here. Has he ever played a role with more grace? His scenes with Gardner are rich with subtext, a decidedly Svengali role but devoid of romance. He is also the film's conscience.
O'Brien had a tendency to put a lot of bluster into most of his roles. He spoke fast, words tumbling over one another, and he often paced while he talked, nervous as a guilty man before a judge. Here he added sweating (much sweating) and he pulled off an Oscar win for best supporting actor. He was always grateful, of course, that he accepted the role but he was at first reluctant to do so because it was another supporting role and of late he been enjoying some star billing and hated to go backwards. But Mankiewicz had directed him a year earlier on Julius Caesar and was able to persuade him.
O'Brien and Gardner made three good films together. Before Contessa was 1946's The Killers and after Seven Days in May (1964).
Brazzi's character is clearly not a very nice count but he manages to bring his usual charm and elegance to the role.
Stevens's role, though small (he disappears after the first quarter), is important. He was a most efficient character actor, often a villain, and there can be no doubt this is his most renowned role. Howard Hughes must have thought they all did a little too good of a job because he threatened to sue. The studio rearranged some things.
Mankiewicz is said to have crafted his screenplay by drawing on the idealized Cinderella concept on stardom to warn others against the romanticization of fame. He unleashes Hollywood's narrow and narrow-minded moral code which will bring punishment to a woman who dares to exercise the sexual freedom that Maria does. He uses the Harry Dawes character to voice truth, reality, kindness and wisdom. There can be no doubt that Harry Dawes is Mankiewicz.
Ace cameraman Jack Cardiff gave the film a most sumptuous look (filmed entirely in Italy). He loved seeing Gardner at the end of his lens and the duo became buddies for life. Her look was further enhanced by the stunning costumes from Fontana. Mario Nascimbene is to be commended for the lush musical score... oh so appropriate.
The statue of Maria/Gardner seen first in Brazzi's forecourt and then at Maria's grave was bought by Sinatra and placed in the forecourt of his Palm Springs home.
I guess it was too slow for some. I've heard others decrying how talky it is but perhaps they did not know that Mankiewicz the writer was a very chatty dude. I wonder if anyone complained about that after viewing All About Eve. One critic called it dreadful. Dreadful? It isn't even close to that and he should stop torturing himself by not going to movies. Has he seen The Swimmer?
One of New York's big-name critics of the day referred to it as a grotesque, barren film. Perhaps he should have switched from movies to Halloween masks. He also said it concerned the glittering and graceless behavior of the Hollywood-international set. Well yeah... he must not like any films on Hollywood. I've heard plodding, unstructured, risqué, even pointless. I advise of these opinions because I said I would. I do not share the viewpoints. Mine are in the third paragraph.
But let's wrap it up with a comment from French director François Truffaut: What is beyond doubt is its total sincerity, novelty, daring and fascination. I myself accept and value it for its freshness, intelligence and beauty. A subtle and intelligent film, beautifully directed and acted.
Here is the trailer:
Next posting:
a guilty pleasure
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