Lyrics
Once I thought I saw you
in a crowded hazy bar,
Dancing on the light
from star to star.
Far across the moonbeam
I know that's who you are,
I saw your brown eyes
turning once to fire.
You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer
where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but
I'm getting blown away.
I am just a dreamer,
but you are just a dream,
You could have been
anyone to me.
Before that moment
you touched my lips
That perfect feeling
when time just slips
Away between us
on our foggy trip.
You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer
where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but
I'm getting blown away.
You are just a dreamer,
and I am just a dream.
You could have been
anyone to me.
Before that moment
you touched my lips
That perfect feeling
when time just slips
Away between us
on our foggy trip.
You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer
where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but
I'm getting blown away.
in a crowded hazy bar,
Dancing on the light
from star to star.
Far across the moonbeam
I know that's who you are,
I saw your brown eyes
turning once to fire.
You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer
where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but
I'm getting blown away.
I am just a dreamer,
but you are just a dream,
You could have been
anyone to me.
Before that moment
you touched my lips
That perfect feeling
when time just slips
Away between us
on our foggy trip.
You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer
where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but
I'm getting blown away.
You are just a dreamer,
and I am just a dream.
You could have been
anyone to me.
Before that moment
you touched my lips
That perfect feeling
when time just slips
Away between us
on our foggy trip.
You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer
where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but
I'm getting blown away.
I really hate the term 'dad rock', which is nowadays too often used to describe classic rock, which is some of the most progressive, exciting and experimental music ever made. That does not mean that because a song belongs to the genre of classic rock is automatically great. Like A Hurricane is a good example of this. It's just a very dull song. And I actually like Neil Young quite a lot. Old Man is a truly great song I think. For the purpose of this blog though, I am at least quite happy by the lyrics of this song about a brown-eyed dreaming dancer with whom the narrator of the song is quite obsessed. It resulted in one of the few links between song and movie which are completely logical.
The Movie: The Barefoot Contessa (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1954)
"Once upon a time there was a beautiful dancer named Maria Vargas..." The Barefoot Contessa could have easily started with this line, because this is the kind of story it wants to be: a dark-ish fairy-tale about Hollywood and romance. And for much of its running time it is a pretty entertaining one, with some great scenes, lines and performances. It's just too bad that in the last 30-40 minutes it nearly completely flies of the rails.
The movie starts at the funeral of Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner) with the voice-over of writer-director Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart, who is great, but what else is new) telling us about how he met Maria when she was dancing in Spain and persuaded her, at the request of arrogant businessman Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens) to come to Hollywood to act in movies. During the course in the movie we will constantly return to that funeral where there are more people who have known Maria including PR-manager Oscar Muldoon (Edmond O'Brien, who justly won an Oscar for this performance) and Maria's husband Count Vincenzo Torlatto-Favrini (Rossano Brazzi). The narration will shift between all these characters allowing them all to share their viewpoint of the mysterious Maria.
The opening of the film is pretty great. After about 30 minutes there have been only two extended scenes full of fantastic dialogue, wherein we get to know most of the main characters. It also helps that these characters are very well written. Harry, as played by Bogart, is especially great. He is a kind, goodhearted cynic who is willing to be very curt to the arrogant self-indulgent Kirk and Oscar, who follows him around like a do. But Harry's good heart shows during his interactions with Maria. They strike up a slightly odd, but very warm and kind friendship that feels to be very realistic. It is very rare in Hollywood movies to present a relationship between two Hollywood characters in such a way, let alone if these two characters are of a different gender. Still, the best scene in the movie occurs during the narration of Oscar, when he finds out that some people such as Maria can become so popular, beloved and famous that they turn his talents obsolete. Maria transcends PR management. It is during these scenes that we actually get some sympathy for Oscar,. We learn to know him as a rather tragic figure who certainly has human emotions, but if he is to do his job well he has to turn of these emotions. And without the script making it explicit O'Brien through his acting shows that he tries, as much as possible, to not be a dirty, vile cynic when doing his job. And so the movie goes on quite entertainingly, while we get to know most of the characters pretty well. Maria remains a mystery, but considering the movie starts with her funeral you expect that near the end some tragic secret about her will be revealed that will very melodramatically leads to her death. This is not really my favorite kind of plot mechanism, but it's a popular one for reasons I can very well understand, so I don't have much of a problem with it if it follows logically out of the rest of the movie, especially if the rest of the movie is so entertaining as The Barefoot Contessa.
It's unfortunate than that the movie is not resolved in quite this way, but in a much worse one. I think that Mankiewicz completely blows the final act of the movie, which is narrated by the count, which is all the more unfortunate considering he also wrote the film. First of all, for some reason Mankiewicz seemingly felt that his movie wasn't enough of a fairy-tale so he decided to add another dash of magical realism. That doesn't fit the mood of the rest of the movie. Even more curious though is the dialogue between the count and his sister, who are two noblemen existentially discussing their empty legacy. Their behavior comes straight out of an Antonioni movie which fits the movie even less, and especially the section in which it occurs. Now, I usually quite love movies with constant changes of tone, but usually the filmmakers seem aware that they are changing the tone, and they seem to have control over it. Mankiewicz does not here. The biggest problem though is that it is not one of Maria's secrets that leads to her death, but one of the count's. It's probably a spoiler to say that his impotence leads to Maria's death, but it is such a lame reveal that is treated with such ridiculous reverence that the movie becomes a farce instead of tragedy as intended. That is also because the reason given for the count's impotence is completely ridiculous. And because the actions (which directly lead to Maria's death) of both Maria and the count after this reveal are nonsensical based on what we know of these characters until then.
The rest of the movie is very much worth seeing though, but I really hated the ending. Lastly it is worth mentioning that the movie can be criticized on feminist grounds. After all, Maria's sole function in this movie is to be mysterious and be admired and loved by men. You could argue that she is not a human being, but a narrative trope that is only used to explore the characters of the men. In this case I do not think that's much of a problem, partly because it is quite unfair to judge older movies according to modern norms and values. But also because the movie is completely honest about its intentions from the first scene on, which is filmed in the bar where Maria is dancing. Only we do not see Maria dancing, we just see how the audience reacts to her. The movie is not really interested in the life of an actress, but on the impact she has on the people around her. There is nothing wrong with that, and if you want to achieve that it does make sense to use Maria, and Ava Gardner, in this way.
The movie starts at the funeral of Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner) with the voice-over of writer-director Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart, who is great, but what else is new) telling us about how he met Maria when she was dancing in Spain and persuaded her, at the request of arrogant businessman Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens) to come to Hollywood to act in movies. During the course in the movie we will constantly return to that funeral where there are more people who have known Maria including PR-manager Oscar Muldoon (Edmond O'Brien, who justly won an Oscar for this performance) and Maria's husband Count Vincenzo Torlatto-Favrini (Rossano Brazzi). The narration will shift between all these characters allowing them all to share their viewpoint of the mysterious Maria.
The opening of the film is pretty great. After about 30 minutes there have been only two extended scenes full of fantastic dialogue, wherein we get to know most of the main characters. It also helps that these characters are very well written. Harry, as played by Bogart, is especially great. He is a kind, goodhearted cynic who is willing to be very curt to the arrogant self-indulgent Kirk and Oscar, who follows him around like a do. But Harry's good heart shows during his interactions with Maria. They strike up a slightly odd, but very warm and kind friendship that feels to be very realistic. It is very rare in Hollywood movies to present a relationship between two Hollywood characters in such a way, let alone if these two characters are of a different gender. Still, the best scene in the movie occurs during the narration of Oscar, when he finds out that some people such as Maria can become so popular, beloved and famous that they turn his talents obsolete. Maria transcends PR management. It is during these scenes that we actually get some sympathy for Oscar,. We learn to know him as a rather tragic figure who certainly has human emotions, but if he is to do his job well he has to turn of these emotions. And without the script making it explicit O'Brien through his acting shows that he tries, as much as possible, to not be a dirty, vile cynic when doing his job. And so the movie goes on quite entertainingly, while we get to know most of the characters pretty well. Maria remains a mystery, but considering the movie starts with her funeral you expect that near the end some tragic secret about her will be revealed that will very melodramatically leads to her death. This is not really my favorite kind of plot mechanism, but it's a popular one for reasons I can very well understand, so I don't have much of a problem with it if it follows logically out of the rest of the movie, especially if the rest of the movie is so entertaining as The Barefoot Contessa.
It's unfortunate than that the movie is not resolved in quite this way, but in a much worse one. I think that Mankiewicz completely blows the final act of the movie, which is narrated by the count, which is all the more unfortunate considering he also wrote the film. First of all, for some reason Mankiewicz seemingly felt that his movie wasn't enough of a fairy-tale so he decided to add another dash of magical realism. That doesn't fit the mood of the rest of the movie. Even more curious though is the dialogue between the count and his sister, who are two noblemen existentially discussing their empty legacy. Their behavior comes straight out of an Antonioni movie which fits the movie even less, and especially the section in which it occurs. Now, I usually quite love movies with constant changes of tone, but usually the filmmakers seem aware that they are changing the tone, and they seem to have control over it. Mankiewicz does not here. The biggest problem though is that it is not one of Maria's secrets that leads to her death, but one of the count's. It's probably a spoiler to say that his impotence leads to Maria's death, but it is such a lame reveal that is treated with such ridiculous reverence that the movie becomes a farce instead of tragedy as intended. That is also because the reason given for the count's impotence is completely ridiculous. And because the actions (which directly lead to Maria's death) of both Maria and the count after this reveal are nonsensical based on what we know of these characters until then.
The rest of the movie is very much worth seeing though, but I really hated the ending. Lastly it is worth mentioning that the movie can be criticized on feminist grounds. After all, Maria's sole function in this movie is to be mysterious and be admired and loved by men. You could argue that she is not a human being, but a narrative trope that is only used to explore the characters of the men. In this case I do not think that's much of a problem, partly because it is quite unfair to judge older movies according to modern norms and values. But also because the movie is completely honest about its intentions from the first scene on, which is filmed in the bar where Maria is dancing. Only we do not see Maria dancing, we just see how the audience reacts to her. The movie is not really interested in the life of an actress, but on the impact she has on the people around her. There is nothing wrong with that, and if you want to achieve that it does make sense to use Maria, and Ava Gardner, in this way.
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