Though not as famous as writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's earlier All About Eve, The Barefoot Contessa is every bit as cynical. A vicious skewering of Hollywood power players and European aristocracy, The Barefoot Contessa is biting, tragic, and cruel. But it's also exquisitely delicate. Three years after Pandora, the film reunited Cardiff and Ava Gardner, who plays Maria Vargas, a Spanish gypsy who is pursued first by Hollywood types and then, once they put her in movies, by the whole world. The film begins at Maria's funeral, with a voiceover by straight-shooting film director Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart). Dawes relates Maria's story, which is at points also taken up by a sweaty, sleazy PR agent (Edmond O'Brien) and the Italian count who loves her. Against lush Cinecittà sets, Cardiff shoots Gardner as a firebrand who's paradoxically surrounded by soft, elegant light; as Maria puts it, she's “half in the dirt, and half out.”