Rent The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Hollywood Fandango - The Barefoot Contessa review by Steve

No surprise this started out as writer-director Joe Mankiewicz's own unpublished novel as he seems to have faithfully dumped the whole lot onto the screen. This might be the most overwritten picture ever. There are three narrative voices and long passages of elaborate speech, heavy with the constant drone of irony.

There's every kind of talk except a soliloquy delivered to a skull, but not much genuine wit. It's about a writer-director, so maybe Mankiewicz thought of this as important stuff, but it is a dramatised airport novel from the decade after WWII when Hollywood cut costs by moving into the spaces vacated by the European aristocracy.

Fans of '50s melodrama will find much to enjoy in the lavish production, with the classic sports cars, haute couture and historic locations- in Technicolor. There's a signature role for Ava Gardner as a low born Spanish dancer courted by the machinery of the Hollywood studios to grind out a profit for the bosses... Yes, there is politics.

Elderly Humphrey Bogart plays the old-school director who mediates between the beautiful naïf and the facts of life. Edmond O'Brien won an Oscar as a press agent who sells his soul to the highest bidder. There is surplus of glamour, star appeal and production gloss but anyone expecting a golden age classic is likely to be disappointed.