george-purdy This Director is OK as a director and has directed some great films, but is generally not so good as a writer. This one is spectacularly bad. He did write and direct the very successful "People will talk", but that had originally been written as a play by someone else, so he was really mainly being a director. Also, "Barefoot" was an inside Hollywood story by a Hollywood insider, and so perhaps he lost his objectivity. They say that autobiographies are nearly always bad.

HotToastyRag The Barefoot Contessa is one of Ava Gardner's most famous movies, and some say it embodied her real-life escapades, but since I don't like her movies and think she was a pretty terrible person, I don't like it. Humphrey Bogart couldn't even fix it.At the start of the movie, we see the attendants at Ava Gardner's funeral. Four men, Humphrey Bogart, Rossano Brazzi, Edmond O'Brien, and Marius Goring, tell fragments of her life story to the audience in flashback. In a way, it reminds me of The Bad and the Beautiful, where four people tell Kirk Douglas's story in flashbacks—but I love that movie and consider it an insult to compare it to Ava Gardner's film. I don't usually like movies told in flashbacks because the audience isn't permitted to follow a linear story, and The Barefoot Contessa is no exception. I won't spoil the plot, but whatever the audience learns about Ava is anticlimactic and a little boring.Unless you really love Ava Gardner, this isn't a classic I'd recommend watching. Personally, I prefer my Barefoot Contessa on Food Network.

dougdoepke An oddity for a decade prone to fairy tale type movies. After all, the build-up is that of a fairy tale coming true for peasant girl Maria (Gardner). In stages she's lifted from poverty-- first, by a film director who gets her a screen test; then, from a successful test she becomes a successful star; after which, she blossoms into a popular super star. From those heights, however, she unwisely marries a rich man (Goring), who soon proves intolerably abusive. In a ballroom showdown, she's happily rescued by a handsome Prince Charming (Brazzi) who spirits her to his European castle to be married. But there, just as her Cinderella tale seems to be coming true, she finds out her Prince's secret, a word that unfortunately could not be used in 1954. So we're left to infer the problem and the movie's crux.Small wonder the story's told in a series of flashbacks from Maria's graveyard funeral. Thus, interest is aroused from the start as to why a girl so young and wealthy could possibly be dead. On my view, the movie's really a modern fairy tale turned into a tragedy. For example, consider a recurring theme; namely, Maria's constant attachment to bare feet over shoes. That I take as an underlying desire for a naturalness stripped of the kind of social pretensions shoe styles can convey. Thus, her struggle, on this view, is really between the stark reality of feet and the societal contrivance of shoes. Extrapolated a bit, it can also convey the importance of foundations to a person's well-being. Perhaps that's why she seems reluctant to accept her fairy tale climb-- it goes against a deeper instinct. Be that as it may, in view of the ending, it's too bad she doesn't stick with instinct rather than temptation.All in all, the indie production was a biggie of that year, featuring two marquee stars, a lavish production, and Hollywood honcho Mankiewicz in charge. Unsurprisingly, it all led to some Oscar go-rounds. Never mind that Hollywood doesn't come off looking very good in the persons of tyrannical producer (Stevens) and sycophantic public relations man (O'Brien). There's still enough gloss, travelogues, and close-ups of the beauteous Gardner to keep us diverted. Happily, Bogie gets his trademark role as a cynical observer, while Gardner gets to show she's more than a pretty face, along with O'Brien who bathes in fast-talking. Not much really happens besides character development. So, credit director Mankiewicz for keeping things moving. Though dated, the movie's worth catching up with; that is, if you can stand the taboo word "impotence", which the 1954 movie obviously couldn't.

JohnHowardReid Edmond O'Brien certainly deserved his Hollywood award for Best Supporting Actor. A difficult role, he has to appear convincingly insincere in most of his scenes, faking his emotions and making himself hypocritically adept at false but flattering compliments. Only in the funeral scene and his off-screen narration, do we discover the real man. Aside from this tour-de-force, however, the movie is a bit disappointing. Mankiewicz told me: "It was almost a good film. But I was angry at too many things and went off in too many directions. Basically, the film was a Cinderella story, but somewhere along the path, I lost my sense of humor." Mankiewicz wrote, directed and produced for Figaro, his own production company. Believe me, it's super-difficult to concentrate on both writing and directing. Producing is a chore I would certainly leave to someone else. Writing and directing have their own headaches, but most of them are artistic problems which good thinking – plus advice from one's peers – can generally overcome. On the other hand, producers handle a vast array of problems – money problems, contract disputes, making sure cast and crew are in the right places at the right times, lining up permission to shoot in both public parks and thoroughfares plus privately owned areas, liaising with the police and other civic officials, providing a shoulder to cry on and mediating disputes between actors and actors, actors and crew, crew and crew and all and sundry with public officials. I could go on and on. Let me just say that although I would gladly sign on to write and/or direct a movie, no way would I agree to produce or have anything to with producing, no matter what inducements of both money and support staff were provided. Anyway, with theses crosses to carry, I think Mankiewicz did wonders with The Barefoot Contessa. My hat's off to him. Actually, for his initial writer-producer-director production, he'd planned to film Twelfth Night, but that project fell through.