The Barefoot Contessa is a prime example of style overshadowing substance. It is a gorgeous film to look at and the stars are beautiful, too. The acting all around is good to excellent, so why is it just a middle of the road film? What is it about this film that prevents it from being one of the greats from it’s era? Fingers can be pointed squarely at writer/director Joseph L Mankiewicz who elected to tell us this story through the point of view of several narrators who take their turn spelling out the proceedings in such a way as to remove much of the energy in an otherwise interesting tale.
This is the story of Maria (Ava Gardner), a stage performer at a restaurant in Spain, who attracts the attention of stand-offish film producer Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens), who is in the country scouting out some new talent for a film he is making. In tow is his chosen director, down on his luck, Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart), the overbearing yes-man Oscar Muldoon (Edmond O’Brien), and a starlet whose only purpose in the film is to demonstrate how ill tempered Kirk can be when he feels someone is insulting him or his beliefs in any way.
They are there to witness Maria perform but, when informed they have missed it for the day, Kirk sends Oscar to try and get Maria to sit with them. When Oscar fails, Kirk strong arms Harry into making the request. Harry, who is more savvy and less excitable, manages to get her to accept the invitation but the mannerisms of Kirk, coupled with the abruptness and lack of tact from Oscar, causes her to flee the table rather than listen anymore to either of them. Harry tracks her down to her home and manages to convince her to accept the opportunity to try out for the new film, leaving behind an abusive mother and a downtrodden father.
Naturally, Maria wows the filmmakers and lands the film. This leads to more starring rolls, all directed by Harry, that propel Maria to movie star status. But Maria is not like the typical starlet obsessed with film success and her public image, preferring to be barefoot, her feet in the dirt, something she feels she is losing by being in Hollywood. She finds little to no enjoyment from the immaturity of the men who flock around her nor of the notoriety her status affords her. When news that her father was beaten by her mother and in turn murdered her back in Spain, Maria drops everything to fly home and support her father despite how this may negatively impact her image. She eventually decides to stay in Europe where a string of romances eventually leads her into the arms of an Italian count who loves her deeply but has a terrible secret.
The film opens and closes with Maria’s funeral, a bookend tactic that serves to drench the entire film in a sense of dread and uncertainty. We know immediately that everything in the rest of the film is leading up to her ultimate demise making it difficult to enjoy much of the proceedings. Early on when Harry first gains an audience with Maria we see that the two have great chemistry together, almost romantic. It is palpable and the banter between them says more than just the words alone. It would be a sheer delight to watch this without the fore knowledge of where things ultimately lead. Any chances of romance between them is quickly doused however as we are made aware of Harry’s wife Jerry (Elizabeth Sellars), an understanding woman who features little in the meat of the story. Harry is devoted to Jerry and vise versa but beyond that we learn little about the couple’s relationship and Jerry disappears midway through the picture. Instead, the relationship of Harry and Maria remains plutonic, almost like a father daughter one as Harry mentors Maria and, later when Maria has left acting, serves as her confidant and a shoulder to cry on.
The directing really lets this film down. Filmmaking 101 teaches a fundamental truth: show, don’t tell. This truth is all but ignored in this film. Major important events happen off screen, portrayed by a sentence or two of dialogue, or (even worse) voice over. In one scene Maria gives a spectacular performance in the courtroom defending her father but we never see it or experience it beyond seeing her speaking but drowned out by the voice over. All we know about her impassioned plea in court we hear about in the voice over narration by Oscar Muldoon as he watches it from the seats. There are many such instances like this which serve to keep us at arms length from those the film wishes us to emphasize with.
It is obvious that Mankiewicz fell in love with the duo of Harry and Maria as these scenes provide us with carefully crafted dialogue that nearly always hits. It is during these moments that we feel closest to Maria as a person and not kept at a distance. This is not Ava Gardner’s fault as her performance at times is neutered by the editing and screenplay. When her character is allowed to shine on screen she is brilliant, spot on playing a nationality she was not and delivering a strong, yet fragile woman is a foreign world. The blame is entirely on Mankiewicz who elected to explain everything through awful voice overs rather than find a more natural and satisfying way to get his point across.
The final result is an unsatisfying picture that tells an intriguing story in such a way as to dissolve nearly all the interest through some very clumsy writing and editing. It is too long by nearly a half hour and tells you in the first minute that this is not going to have a happy ending and therefore needs to work extra hard to keep our interest. Tragedies can and do work in films but they require a skilled hand at developing characters we care about and can get invested in. This film keeps us at a distance most of the time, drawing us a little in during just a handful of scenes between the two stars before kicking us back onto the sidelines. In the end it is just too difficult to get invested in what we already know is going to happen. It should have jettisoned the bookends and the narration and kept the focus squarely on Maria. Ava Gardner had the chops to pull it off and deliver a truly compelling character piece but she let down at virtually every turn.
Running Time: 130 minutes
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien, Rossini Brazzi, Warren Stevens
Directed by: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
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