Blood and Sand

Rouben Mamoulian's adaptation of the Vicente Blasco Ibanez novel is less a film about bullfighting than the product of sustained thinking about colour. The Technicolor photography by Ernest Palmer and Ray Rennahan draws directly on Spanish painting, imitating the palettes of El Greco, Goya and Velazquez scene by scene. The two won the Oscar for colour cinematography in 1942 for it. The story is familiar. Juan Gallardo, a peasant boy played by Tyrone Power, becomes a star in the ring and is caught between two women, with Linda Darnell as the childhood sweetheart and Rita Hayworth as the woman who will destroy him. Hayworth's performance here was the turning point of her career. What is honest about the film is that it never glorifies the ring. The crowd's exhilaration and the wearing down of Gallardo's body advance at exactly the same rate, and the ending follows from that. Who it is for: viewers who want classic Hollywood melodrama and a masterclass in the use of colour. Who it is not for: anyone disturbed by bullfighting sequences.