The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

US 130m, Colour
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz; Cast: Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart, Edmond O’Brien

Beginning with the funeral of the lead character, The Barefoot Contessa is a slow-moving melodrama about Maria Vargas, a Spanish dancer who finds fame and fortune as an actress with the help of a veteran Hollywood writer/director, but finds love to be a more difficult proposition. Filled with film references, this movie about the movie is surprisingly uninteresting and suffers from an overabundance of narration. Though often feeling like a parody, it fails to deliver much in the way of effective satire, nor does it make for a compelling drama (Klaus Ming January 2015).

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