Four years after the phenomenal All About Eve, Joseph L Manckiewicz moves away from Broadway and lands in Hollywood. Naturally, everything in Hollywood is bound to be louder, more vulgar, more shallow and more expensive and surprisingly less relatable, less credible. Ava Gardner is breathtakingly beautiful and Jack Cardiff photographs her like a goddess but that's no match for any of the exchanges between Bette Davis and Thelma Ritter in All About Eve. Here the soap opera elements dominate the tale. The Italian aristocrats as played by Rossano Brazzi and Valentina Cortese take the story for a ludicrous spin. Josseph L Manckiewicz as a writer and director makes sure the film doesn't become "The Legend Of Lylah Clare" for instance. Humphery Bogart plays the lead and I forgot to mention it. I wonder why. He's wonderful in it but the Oscar went to Edmond O'Brian for his unbearable press agent. Ava Gardner presence transformed this lurid tale into a classic and it's bound to remain so for ever.

The film begins in Spain where a totally obnoxious and evil rich producer (Warren Stevens) has come to offer a talented Spanish lady (Ava Gardner) a film contract. His entourage includes an alcoholic director who is on the wagon (Humphrey Bogart) and a fast-talking idiot PR man (Edmund O'Brien). Ms. Gardner makes it big in Hollywood, but seems bored with it all and spends much of the rest of the movie running from herself until a very tragic conclusion.

Aside from a few clichés here and there, this is a pretty good film and has a pretty cynical view of stardom. However, I also felt pretty annoyed at times during the picture because most of the characters in the film are amazingly wealthy and/or famous and they spend all their time whining about how bored they are!! This is exactly the sort of film that gives Communist revolutionaries the incentive to destroy the 'decadent Capitalists'! The character Ava Gardner played was on top of the world but also spent much of the film in a depressed stupor and the rich guys around her were ALL selfish louts. In fact, the only decent person in the entire film was Bogart.

While very watchable, the film is highly reminiscent of the Godard film, CONTEMPT, as well as THE SUN ALSO RISES (also starring Gardner). It's almost like the producers of the these other two films teased apart THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA and broke it into two films.