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THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA(1954)

Today's movie; NYTimes1000Best; Ava Gardner; Humphrey Bogart; written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz. Mankiewicz wrote and ghostwrote a lot of pictures and we have seen and will see a few: ALL ABOUT EVE for example. A lot of his work was done with his brother Herman who has an even more impressive number of 1000Best (PRIDE OF THE YANKEES). Quite a family. They are from Wilkesbarre, PA; near where I grew up. If you can make a career like their's out of Wilkesbarre, you are special!

This melodrama is really great to watch right up to its implausible ending. It is a 'fifties ending' where the earthy woman with strong sexual appetites (or gay man or other sinner type) must be killed off for moral turpitude. There is no other explanation for the ending. This is not a spoiler. The first scene of the film is in a graveyard; the funeral of the Gardner character. Ava Gardner was also scandalous in her off screen behavior, so it is probably even more important that she be punished for indulging in sport fucking.

That having been said, the film is absolutely beautiful with a use of color; always surprising and supportive of the story and characters. For example, Bogart is always in brown. You have to see it. I was glad that it was NOT a story about romantic love between Bogart and Gardner; Bogart is in his last-hairpiece stage Soon, he will be unable to cover all of it without looking like Ronald McDonald. They could not light around it. It is a nicely built relationship with a lot of love and humor. We stayed glued to it until the ending which is really not that long and seems tacked on to sort of please the censors.

One of the neat things about fifties and earlier films are their NON-explicit narrative. You have to listen and dig a bit to get the point about sex or anything 'unprintable' but it is all there in spades. The veils are very thin. I liked it; a 3 out of Netflix5.