The Barefoot contessa

Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner) is a poor nightclub dancer in Madrid who is discovered by film director Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart). Dawes takes Maria to Rome and she becomes one of the world’s biggest movie stars. However, she finds that the glamorous world of the movies is a facade and descends into a bleak isolation, surrounded by sleazy dealers, syncophantic hangers-on and self-obsessed lovers. “The Barefoot Contessa” is both a rich and sumptuous Hollywood melodrama filmed in glorious colour and a savage indictment of the materialism and greed that dominates commercial filmmaking. Powerfully acted, brilliantly directed and with a script that included the uncredited involvement of screenwriters blacklisted during the McCarthyite “witch-hunts”, this film manages to be one of those rare Hollywood films that both entertain and disturb. The cast includes Bessie Love, Valentina Cortesa and Rossano Brazzi in an excellent performance as Maria’s impotent, possibly bisexual husband.