BELMONTE is generally recognized as the world's most famous (and perhaps best) bullfighter. Hemingway always said (or so the film's promotional taglines say) that he had only met two geniuses : Einstein and Belmonte. This filmed biography uses two actors as Juan Belmonte, as he ages. During Belmonte's era, bullfighting (tauromaquia) was elevated to an art form by European intellectuals mostly as a result of what Belmonte injected into it: bravery, tragedy, fatalism, salvagery, passion, and rivalry with the other bullfighters, not forgetting his notorious love life. This film, if nothing else, is a good period piece which lavishly and (arguably) faithfully reproduces Belmonte's myth.
