The Barefoot Contessa

Joseph L. Mankiewicz
The opening shot, and graveyard, is excellent. Some dramatic angles of that statue, grand tracks in and out, all very nice. I also like, just unthinkingly like, voicovers. Swtiching it from person to person here stops this being a noir. It is also of course about ineffability, and the shadows drifting into and out of her life is strongly shown here.
The colours of the film are clearly fairy-tale like, meant to be unreal. What colours a person heads towards seems to signal their situation. In general, the direction is functional but unspectacular. We have a lot of SRS, and looks to see what others are going. The typical longer shot, where we have standing dialogue, is perhaps a little longer than usual in 1954.
This film is endlessly reflexive, a little tiringly so, but it does give it a little bump it probably needs. Foregrounding itself as narrative, as what 'should' be done, gives a fatefulness and adds to that theme of the inevitable end of the play acting of a gilded aristocracy and, ultimately, a class. We have lovely imagery of the Riviera, that fading grandeur and the static statues meant to populate it. One would like more of this ennui, one would have liked, say, Visconti to handle it. The film does feel very European, in location obviously but in a weary view, and one not wishing to tie everything up.
Kast was pushing it to see a real go at capital here; yes, she is destroyed by money, but that's rather kept on the backburner, especially in the rather ridiculous last twenty minutes. Some fine touches, little standing-ups and looks, make for a decent picture.