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| The Barefoot Contessa | 
 enlarge | Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'brien, Marius Goring, Valentina Cortese
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $6.29
You Save: $8.69 (58%)
New (53) Used (14) from $5.63
Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 13597
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 128
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.1 x 0.6
MPN: MGMD1002029D
ISBN: 0792850092
UPC: 027616862693
EAN: 9780792850090
ASIN: B00005AUK7
Theatrical Release Date: September 29, 1954
Release Date: June 19, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: ******BRAND NEW****** ** Over 1.5 million orders shipped worldwide and more than 500 000 items in stock, BUY FROM A TRUSTED SOURCE, ESTABLISHED SINCE 1998 - INETVIDEO ~~~
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| Customer Reviews:
Ava April 11, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
There will be other Monroes, Madonnas, Hepburns, etc. There will only ever be 1 Ava Gardner. She was "everywoman" with amazing sex appeal and kindness. She never forgot she was a small town girl who got lucky.
 started out great, then went bad February 6, 2007
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
I watched this movie with great anticipation. It is very well acted and starts out great. It's the story of a young Spanish woman who comes to America to star in movies. She has had an extremely hard life and wants to get away from it all. She becomes an overnight star and has everything, except love. She meets and falls in love with a Count and that's where the story goes horribly wrong. Basically, she finds out, on their wedding night, he can't fufill her in marriage, so she has an affair. She gets pregnant, which she is excited about, and then her husband finds out about the affair, but not the pregnancy, and kills her and the man she has the affair with.
It was a horrible ending to an, otherwise, great movie.
 Ava Gardner acted with the distracted air of a woman searching for something she cannot quite define... December 17, 2006
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Ava Gardner replaced Rita Hayworth, in the late forties and early fifties, as Hollywood's leading love goddess... She was less sparkly than Rita, and her reign, coming just before Marilyn Monroe's, was a short one, but she had certain symbolic virtues that were not to be denied... There is indeed an animal quality about her sensuality... She is a proud, restless tigress, sure of her powers, yet confused about their proper uses...
"The Barefoot Contessa," opens at the rain-drenched gravesite of actress Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner) where the people who were involved with her recount how she arrived at this stern destination... They include Bogart as a film director and Edmond O'Brien, who won an Academy Award for his performance as a loud-mouthed press agent...
Bogart relates how he was hired to write a screenplay featuring a new glamor girl... He and a rude millionaire interested in movie-making (Warren Stevens) discover Maria dancing in a Madrid cabaret and choose her as their leading lady... She becomes an overnight sensation and helps Bogart regain his lost stature... The remainder of this overlong film then turns to pretentious soap-opera, building to a climax in which Maria and a boyfriend are in face of an impotent husband...
The film was populated by harsh, self-indulgent, and unsavory men who all came off second-best to Bogart, a cynical but comparatively likable character...
The plot had strong cinematic possibilities, but the script by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who also directed, had ambiguous passages, overly ornate, and ultimately tiresome...
 The Barefoot Contessa November 10, 2006
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Nothing much to write of. Excellent casting, the story holds up well, not dated. An all time favorite of mine.
Which prince will have the glass slipper? (recommended) August 11, 2006
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
In vivid Technicolor, Academy Award winning THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA stars ravishing Ava Gardner as Maria Vargas -- a rising movie star with a heart in more humble surroundings and romantic dreams based on storybook fantasies that end in tragedy. Beginning with Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart), the men in her short life have flashbacks about how each met and affected her. Between stories, the camera pans back to the active cemetery funeral service before zooming in on a new character.
Harry, a movie writer/director who has his own love interest, nurtures with Maria more of a protective sibling relationship than carnal attraction. She may see the wisdom in his advice at times but is motivated by her own heart and fairy tales. With the stage presence of Catherine Zeta-Jones, 30-year-old Gardner actually had the most difficult role to convey as Maria. Though she preferred to walk barefoot, she no longer was comfortable hiding in the squaller and she was not happy with the life as an instant Hollywood sensation. Maria was too much woman for the lowly gypsies with which she grew up and not enough for the misogynistic aristocrats bemused by her chastity and surreal beauty.
There is some romance but with Harry having his own girl, the narration and vignettes come across more as a suspenseful -- often comedic documentary than a romantic love story. Adding to this are Maria's unrealistic ideas about love that were only transcended by the man she eventually married. In the end you have a complete picture of who Maria was, by whom was she known as THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA, and why her life ended so abruptly. With four intertwined stories to tell, the movie may appear a bit long at 130 minutes. Yet, Gardner lights up each scene. There are also some "well-known bright remarks," coming from the vicinity of Bogart.
Favorite quotes: (1) "Script girl, name is Jerry.""She has the name of a man?""I assure you there is no further resemblance." (2) "I do not like Mr. Kirk Edwards.""You're standing at the end of a very long line."
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