A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Blood and Sand (Rouben Mamoulian, 1941)

Tyrone Power in Blood and Sand

Cast: Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Rita Hayworth, Alla Nazimova, Anthony Quinn, J. Carrol Naish, Lynn Bari, John Carradine, Laird Cregar. Screenplay: Jo Swerling, based on a novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. Cinematography: Ernest Palmer, Ray Rennehan. Art direction: Richard Day, Joseph C. Wright. Film editing: Robert Bischoff. Music: Arnold Newman. 

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's novels aren't read much anymore, but they were a fertile source for screenwriters in the silent era, providing two vehicles for Rudolph Valentino, Blood and Sand (Fred Niblo, 1922) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rex Ingram, 1921), and two for Greta Garbo, Torrent (Monta Bell, 1926) and The Temptress (Niblo, 1926). It was probably the Valentino connection that led producer and studio head Darryl F. Zanuck to revive Blasco's old warhorse Blood and Sand as a vehicle for Twentieth Century Fox's biggest male star, Tyrone Power. He plays Juan Gallardo, the son of a bullfighter who was killed in the ring. The movie follows Juan's rise and fall, as he becomes the greatest matador in Spain, but finds love and glory too much to handle. It's genuine cornball stuff, with the usual characters: his sweet and devoted wife, Carmen (Linda Darnell); the temptress Doña Sol (Rita Hayworth), who steals him away from Carmen; and the devoted mother (Alla Nazimova) who prays that he'll be gored in the ring just bad enough to get him out of the game that killed his father. Darnell's is a thankless role, and it's not made any better by the decision to include a scene in which Carmen prays to the Virgin and we hear both her prayer and the Virgin's response to it in voiceover. Hayworth is sensational, however, never better than in a scene in which she dances with Manolo (Anthony Quinn), a friend of Juan's who has set out on his own to become a rival bullfighter. The Technicolor cinematography won an Oscar, and some of the credit goes to director Rouben Mamoulian, who wanted to evoke the palette of Spanish painters like Goya and Velázquez. Mamoulian has to be faulted, however, for the thudding obviousness of the death scene of Nacional (John Carradine), one of Juan's friends, who expires with his arms stretched out in a pose that recalls the crucifixes often seen in the film. The bullfight scenes, shot in Mexico, were supervised by Budd Boetticher, who had done some bullfighting there. They are, fortunately for those of us who find the sport repellent, kept to a minimum -- there's more sand than blood to be seen. 

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