Blood and Sand (1941)

Fiesta Nacional, La Corrida, the bullfight, has been a tradition of sport, art and pomp in Spain since its original inception in 1133 to honor the crowning of King Alfonso VIII. It originally sprang from celebrations of the hunt and whether regarded as a nuanced “dance of death” or barbaric animal cruelty, it remains a popular spectacle in many Latin countries.

The events are equivalent to NFL games in America and its participants are heralded as cultural superstars. The names of El Cordobes, Belmonte and Manolete are as legendary as Johnny Unitas, Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth. It is estimated that annually in Spain over 24,000 bulls are killed in front of 30 million spectators. Bullfighting has inspired sculptors, painters and authors for centuries.

To Hemingway it was Death in the Afternoon. In 1909, to Vicente Blasco Ibanez, it was Sangre y Arena (Blood and Sand).

The first Hollywood adaptation of Ibanez’ novel was produced in 1922 and had solidified Rudolph Valentino’s name into film legend. Nineteen years later Daryl F. Zanuck, with the relatively newfound “trickery” of Technicolor, decided to give the story the rich and stylish treatment he felt it deserved.

Zanuck chose Tyrone Power (Fox’s answer to Warner Bros.’ Errol Flynn) to play Juan Gallardo, the young bullfighter with aspirations to become Spain’s greatest matador. Power had become a box office phenomenon with 1936’s Lloyd’s of London, In Old Chicago (1937), Jesse James (1939) and The Mark of Zorro (1940). His radiant good looks and enthusiastic acting style had made him a sex symbol for the ladies and a dashing hero to the men. That combination would serve the role of the cocksure torero quite well.

To ensure the passion and fire of its source material and to create one of those magical Hollywood screen pairings, the sultry sex goddess Rita Hayworth was attained on loan from Columbia. She would play Dona Sol des Muire, the sensual aristocrat who seduces the naïve bullfighter. She had been used improperly for most of her young career playing bit roles as scene decoration. Only in Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings (1939) and Raoul Walsh’s Strawberry Blonde (1941) was her true glamorous nature and beauty effectively utilized. In Blood and Sand, she took to the role like a hungry tigress toying with helpless prey. She is, at all times, seductive, unattainable, despicable, treacherous, alluring and wholly desirable. Few women have ever radiated beauty like Hayworth on screen. Her mere presence evokes the most dangerous thoughts in men (and perhaps women as well).

The story is essentially a rags to riches to ruin saga. A young Juan Gallardo (Rex Downing) lives in abject poverty in Seville with his sister (Lynn Bari) and mother (silent screen star Alla Nazimova) where he dreams of becoming a famous matador like his father (who was killed in the ring). He often sneaks off at night to a ranch where he hops into a training arena to practice with the bulls. The ranch hand’s daughter Carmen is his childhood sweetheart and he promises to return to her with money and fame. He leaves with his friends (also aspiring matadors) for Madrid to seek his destiny.  

Cut to ten years later, where Juan (Power) has become a bullfighter of some stature. His friends are now his cuadrilla (led by John Carradine and Anthony Quinn) and they return to Seville in the off-season with egos swelled. Expecting fanfare at the train station, Juan is temporarily dejected to find only his mother waiting for him. He hosts an impromptu party and woos the townsfolk with many gifts from Madrid. He then sets out to find Carmen (Linda Darnell) and proposes to her as promised.

On his return to the ring, he finally realizes the elusive fame he has coveted and becomes Spain’s most celebrated matador. He is now the toast of Madrid, even having won over Curro (Laird Cregar), a snooty bullfighting critic who had formerly ridiculed him and his father. Juan now catches the eye of the lovely Dona Sol (Hayworth) whose legendary status as a man-eater is observed by Curro thusly; if bullfighting is, “death in the afternoon, she is death in the evening”.

The ruin of Juan comes swiftly. Initially, Carmen stays by him despite his marital transgressions but the infidelity and decadence of his alternate life with Dona Sol soon tears his marriage, career and status asunder. Darnell’s Carmen is a saintly figure; simple, pure and without pretense (she would play quite a different female four years later in Otto Preminger’s Fallen Angel). Her forgiveness becomes Juan’s only hope for redemption and ultimately, his salvation.

The technical aspects of the picture are where its true beauty lies. Rouben Mamuolian was chosen to helm the film. Teamed with cinematographers Ernest Palmer (who had been in the industry since 1918) and Ray Rennahan (a master of the Technicolor process) they created a deeply lavish and painterly palette to the imagery.

Combined, Palmer and Rennehan would work on over 250 films in their long and respected careers. Rennehan is one of only six cinematographers to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and twice held the position of President of the American Society of Cinematographers (A.S.C.) in 1950-51 and 1965-66. He won an Oscar for Best Color Cinematography for Gone with the Wind in 1939 and would share the same award with Palmer for this picture in 1942.

Mamoulian was a major player in his own right, a maverick in many regards. As a director he made the transition from early sound black and white to color with great ease due to his willingness to move the bulky new equipment around. This nod to fluidity gave his films a more modern look which accounts for why many of his contemporary’s have been forgotten over time. He also has the status of directing the first Technicolor feature ever, 1935’s Becky Sharp.

Mamoulian’s visionary approach to filmmaking often clashed with the studio higher ups and his career looks uneven and half baked in retrospect. It is unfortunate. His stylistic integrity and innovations in visual storytelling never equated to box office success. His oeuvre is dotted with gems like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932), Queen Christina (1933), Golden Boy (1939) and 1940’s The Mark of Zorro and he had a concurrent, highly respected career on the Broadway stage directing such classics as A Farewell to Arms (1930), Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma (1943) and Carousel (1945). Sadly it is his dismissals from projects like 1944’s Laura (replaced by Preminger), 1958’s Porgy and Bess (Preminger again) and 1963’s Cleopatra (Joseph Mankiewicz) that gained him most of his notoriety.

In Blood and Sand, Mamuolian’s talents were at their peak. With Palmer and Rennahan he drenched the film with the appropriate palettes of the Spanish Masters. The color tones are decidedly distinct; the earthy browns of Bartolome Murillo for the dark recesses of Juan’s impoverished Seville, the sun soaked colors of Joaquin Sorolla for the city’s exteriors, the deep greens of El Greco for the religious iconography and Francisco Goya’s golds and blood reds for the plaza de toros. The director even went so far as to spray paint props, costumes and sets to imitate the oil on canvas texture of these artists.

The result is a beautifully realized vision of Spanish history, its people and culture. Blood and Sand is a testament to the technical ingenuity and broad storytelling of its time. It is a universally themed saga of aspiration, glory and ruin in the finest of Hollywood tradition.

It would be a few years later that World War II changed everything, including Tinseltown. A darker, less heroic worldview known as film noir would capture moviegoer’s imaginations and inure the American film audience. The innocence had been lost. The entrenched and highly successful studio system would begin its long and inevitable decline.