This Director is OK as a director and has directed some great films, but is generally not so good as a writer. This one is spectacularly bad. He did write and direct the very successful "People will talk", but that had originally been written as a play by someone else, so he was really mainly being a director. Also, "Barefoot" was an inside Hollywood story by a Hollywood insider, and so perhaps he lost his objectivity. They say that autobiographies are nearly always bad.

Spoiler Alerts ahead! There are so many things wrong with this film, that it's hard to know where to begin. As others have noted, the main failing is the overall tone: unrelentingly morose and downbeat. Perhaps the writers were attempting a psychological thriller like "Gilda." However, they made a crucial mistake - the leading actor, Humphrey Bogart, has no romantic relationship with the leading actress, Ava Gardner! The script goes to great pains to stress that they are just friends, and that the Humphrey Bogart character is in love with his on screen wife (a minor character played by an actress I'd never seen before.) Yawn. Meanwhile, no one can interest the Ava Gardner character until late in the film when she falls for Rossano Brazzi. Although it's hard to tell that she falls for him at all.However, they get married, and here's where the script really goes off the rails. RB fails to disclose that his junk was shot off in the War prior to their nuptials. The film just throws this cruel deception out there without comment and then seems to judge the Ava Gardner character for having to cope with it. Of course this was still the era of the Hayes Code, and another thing that the screenwriters seem to be counting on is a certain amount of naivety on the part of the audience, by assuming that the audience would think that a man would need his equipment to, um, make a woman happy. Humphrey Bogart badgers Ava Gardner, "How long was it before you couldn't stand it anymore?", I.e. go without sex? I have a feeling that couples went home in the 1950's and asked each other, ""Why didn't they just..you know...?" Ava Gardner's solution of providing her husband with a baby he can use as an heir is of course misguided, but not too implausible. But I think the script breaks down again when Humphrey Bogart fails to inform Rossanno Brazzi of his wife's good intentions by getting pregnant and just lets him think she a slut. If you have a good quality television this film will be worth watching just for how radiant Ava Gardner looks. She is stunning, especially in sunglasses and a black swimsuit. The locations in the South of France are nice to look at, too.

The plot of this didn't sound like the type of movie I would really enjoy but I watched it because I'm a big fan of Humphrey Bogart. His '50s films aren't my favorites but I feel the need to see them just to check them off my list. Anyway, on to the good and bad of this picture. The good: the direction is great and the actors mostly do fine. Bogart and Edmond O'Brien (who won an Oscar) are the standouts. The bad: it's talky, long, dull, full of clichés and mostly unrelatable and unlikable characters. I've never been overly impressed with Ava Gardner and that trend continues here. This is one of those "plights of the rich, famous, and attractive" soapers. It's not terrible of its type which admittedly is not a type I'm crazy about. There is an audience for it, however, and it's rated fairly high on IMDb. So I won't say that it isn't worth seeing. If you are a big fan of Ava Gardner's or if you like these types of movies, you should definitely check it out.

The movie starts with the funeral of a relatively young woman. Her story is told in flashbacks. You keep watching because you want to know how and why she died.She is not a particularly interesting person, more a china bust with a frozen smile. She is supposedly a spectacular dancer but does only one rather embarrassing dance routine that reminded me of my mother dancing when drunk.She is surrounded by interesting people e.g. screenwriter Harry Dawes, played by a very mellow and likable Humphrey Bogart.Kirk Edwards is a gum chewing billionaire, who makes his life miserable by bullying everyone just for the fun of it.Alberto Bravano is a South American tycoon, who is perfectly candid about his own selfishness. His honesty and lack of hypocrisy makes him extremely charming.The movie makes clear how wealth and fame can most of the time get in the way of happiness. It shows how they seduce and corrupt. It pokes fun at the airhead wealthy who descend on the Riviera each year to gamble.The movie also explores jealousy, how pleasant life can be when it is in check and how miserable when it is not.It is a quite slow paced, somewhat boring movie. Not much happens. It just meanders around to its rather surprising conclusion.