While in the burial of Countess Torlato-Favrini (Ava Gardner), her friend Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart) and the Count Vincenzo Torlato- Favrini (Rossano Brazzi) recall parts of her past. When the wealthy Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens) hires director and screenplay writer Harry Dawes, they travel to Spain with the public relations Oscar Muldoon to see the dancer of a nightclub Maria Vargas and invite her for an audition, since they need a new face for their next movie. Maria, a naive woman with simple origins, is convinced by Harry to go to Hollywood and becomes a famous star and a close friend of Harry and his girlfriend Jerry (Elizabeth Sellars). Along her successful career, Maria lives personal dramas including lack of adaptation for her new lifestyle, is unable to love and is disputed by the powerful millionaires Kirk Edwards and Alberto Bravano (Marius Goring). When she meets the noble and handsome Count Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini (Rossano Brazzi) in the French Riviera, she believes that she found her prince charming and her life becomes a fairy tale. But after the wedding, she sees that her Cinderella's castle of dreams has become a pumpkin.
"The Barefoot Contessa" is another movie of the great director Joseph L. Mankiewicz where, like in "All About Eve", the backstage of the lifestyle of Hollywood of the 50's is disclosed without any glamor, full of betrayals, ambition and manipulation, where lives are destroyed by cynic and powerful people. Ava Gardner steals this movie with her astonishing beauty, Humphrey Bogart is excellent as usual and Edmond O'Brien won the Oscar. This melodramatic story has also a great cinematography and locations, and in spite of some moments of "soap-opera", it is a good film. My vote is eight.
Title (Brazil): "A Condessa Descalça" ("The Barefoot Countess")
Note: On 01 May 2012, I saw this film again on DVD.
"The Barefoot Contessa" is another movie of the great director Joseph L. Mankiewicz where, like in "All About Eve", the backstage of the lifestyle of Hollywood of the 50's is disclosed without any glamor, full of betrayals, ambition and manipulation, where lives are destroyed by cynic and powerful people. Ava Gardner steals this movie with her astonishing beauty, Humphrey Bogart is excellent as usual and Edmond O'Brien won the Oscar. This melodramatic story has also a great cinematography and locations, and in spite of some moments of "soap-opera", it is a good film. My vote is eight.
Title (Brazil): "A Condessa Descalça" ("The Barefoot Countess")
Note: On 01 May 2012, I saw this film again on DVD.