"Blood and Sand" shows trademarks of producer Daryl Zanuck top actors well-cast in both leading and supporting roles, direction and performances that match the subject matter and never sacrifice story and character logic to show off, and fantastic production values featuring many authentic locations. Tyrone Power cuts a dashing figure as fearless bullfighter Juan Gallardo, whose father's death in the ring left him with a massive chip on the shoulder. Linda Darnell is lovely and sweet as his long-suffering wife Carmen; she's so appealing that I wonder why Power's character is so attracted to Dona Sol (Rita Hayworth) that he basically destroys his career over her. Hayworth's performance is intriguingly cold, like a deliberately 2-dimensional version of her later iconic work in "Gilda" where she was a more ambivalent character. Rita's got a rictus grin that she wears through the entire film which is truly chilling, especially when she sadistically exposes Gallardo's cheating and crushes his wife's free and easy spirit. At first I thought the grin and her stiff bearing were a miscalculation but after seeing that scene I know that Mamoulian and Hayworth knew exactly what they were doing.
There's a particularly strong supporting cast you know you're in for a treat when Power's gang includes John Carradine and Anthony Quinn. Carradine is unusually animated in this film and plays a kind of sacrificial lamb thrown to the bulls (sorry for the mixed metaphor there, lol). In fact there's some rather bizarre and straightforward Christ symbolism associated with the character, and it's impressive how well it's pulled off especially in Carradine's death scene. Nobody does death scenes like Carradine. But even that isn't as bizarre as the scene where Darnell's character prays to the Blessed Mother and the statue speaks back . In the voice of Gallardo's mother (Nazimova)! To understand the impact of this unusual and perhaps even unprecedented device (a character's voice as the voice of god) I think we'd have to look closely at the film's layered approach to character identity in general. Each significant character is a double or a doppelganger for another character. That double represents the potential future and/or a certain aspect of the individual. We're instantly made aware of a strong identification between the boy and his father, a famous matador who perished bullfighting. The boy has several father figures including matador Garabato (J. Carrol Naish). When they meet later their positions have changed and Garabato is destitute; Gallardo takes him in as a valet and their relationship serves as both a connection to his father and a portent of one of the two inevitable fates towards with he seems destined the other being death in the ring.
There are similar parallels between Nacional (Carradine) and Christ and also between the mother and Carmen. She will become just like "Madrecitta" if and when Gallardo meets his demise at the horns of the bull.
This structure allows for rich, if somewhat overstated, symbolic and melodramatic opportunities for character development, all of which comes to a head at the film's conclusion in the scene between Nazimova and Darnell and the subsequent prayer, and the drama is resolved in suitably symbolic fashion in Gallardo's religiously staged death scene.
Madrecitta reveals in that first startling scene how she prays to Jesus because he is a "Man-God" and stronger than the Madonna and that she prays not for his safety as does Carmen but for a maiming injury that will end his career but allow him to avoid his father's end. It's too easy to interpret this strictly as an affirmation of male superiority. What I think it suggests is a deeply Catholic pessimism about ambition, avarice, and pride which are represented in this film (and, presumably, the source novel) by the father/son ego bond revolving around the bullfighting ring and the terrifying beasts they battle therein. Hayworth's sensual vamp is just such a beast of the ring (symbolized quite literally by the ring she passes from one lover to the next) and she is the one who truly slays Gallardo, the beast he believes has never been born. She plays the bull for him and shouts "toro!" but ultimately passes the ring and plays the bull for Gallardo's jealous nemesis (Quinn) in a remarkably stylized and beautiful dance sequence. When she was a child she threw away her toys when she grew bored with them, and as an adult nothing has changed no matter what she gets she is never happy but instead looking for the next thing. Sin does not make us content the thesis of Augustine's "Confessions" and the core of Catholic asceticism.
Gallardo cannot escape his fate; he and even Carmen have asked for too much perfection from this mortal world. Nacional is too perfect for this world just as he is too intelligent and well-intentioned for the bullfighting world where he remains out of loyalty to Gallardo. It is an extraordinary performance and one that gives Carradine a rare opportunity to show the real extent of his talent. Likewise for Power, whose performance carries the entire film and compels us to remain invested in a character with fatal personality flaws and a story whose ending we should know far in advance. Darnell is adequate; she seems to me an average actress well-directed, though I don't know her work well enough to say for sure. Nazimova is very "typical" in a way, but she pulls off what could have been a forgettable role. She has the wisdom that Gallardo and Carmen lack; not that men are stronger than women but that only sacrifice as represented by the Man-God Christ (and symbolized by Nacional) can show us the path through moral life. The violent and glamorous world of men, and the women who sustain themselves like vampires on the power of champions, will show no more mercy to yesterday's champions than the matador does the bull.
There's a particularly strong supporting cast you know you're in for a treat when Power's gang includes John Carradine and Anthony Quinn. Carradine is unusually animated in this film and plays a kind of sacrificial lamb thrown to the bulls (sorry for the mixed metaphor there, lol). In fact there's some rather bizarre and straightforward Christ symbolism associated with the character, and it's impressive how well it's pulled off especially in Carradine's death scene. Nobody does death scenes like Carradine. But even that isn't as bizarre as the scene where Darnell's character prays to the Blessed Mother and the statue speaks back . In the voice of Gallardo's mother (Nazimova)! To understand the impact of this unusual and perhaps even unprecedented device (a character's voice as the voice of god) I think we'd have to look closely at the film's layered approach to character identity in general. Each significant character is a double or a doppelganger for another character. That double represents the potential future and/or a certain aspect of the individual. We're instantly made aware of a strong identification between the boy and his father, a famous matador who perished bullfighting. The boy has several father figures including matador Garabato (J. Carrol Naish). When they meet later their positions have changed and Garabato is destitute; Gallardo takes him in as a valet and their relationship serves as both a connection to his father and a portent of one of the two inevitable fates towards with he seems destined the other being death in the ring.
There are similar parallels between Nacional (Carradine) and Christ and also between the mother and Carmen. She will become just like "Madrecitta" if and when Gallardo meets his demise at the horns of the bull.
This structure allows for rich, if somewhat overstated, symbolic and melodramatic opportunities for character development, all of which comes to a head at the film's conclusion in the scene between Nazimova and Darnell and the subsequent prayer, and the drama is resolved in suitably symbolic fashion in Gallardo's religiously staged death scene.
Madrecitta reveals in that first startling scene how she prays to Jesus because he is a "Man-God" and stronger than the Madonna and that she prays not for his safety as does Carmen but for a maiming injury that will end his career but allow him to avoid his father's end. It's too easy to interpret this strictly as an affirmation of male superiority. What I think it suggests is a deeply Catholic pessimism about ambition, avarice, and pride which are represented in this film (and, presumably, the source novel) by the father/son ego bond revolving around the bullfighting ring and the terrifying beasts they battle therein. Hayworth's sensual vamp is just such a beast of the ring (symbolized quite literally by the ring she passes from one lover to the next) and she is the one who truly slays Gallardo, the beast he believes has never been born. She plays the bull for him and shouts "toro!" but ultimately passes the ring and plays the bull for Gallardo's jealous nemesis (Quinn) in a remarkably stylized and beautiful dance sequence. When she was a child she threw away her toys when she grew bored with them, and as an adult nothing has changed no matter what she gets she is never happy but instead looking for the next thing. Sin does not make us content the thesis of Augustine's "Confessions" and the core of Catholic asceticism.
Gallardo cannot escape his fate; he and even Carmen have asked for too much perfection from this mortal world. Nacional is too perfect for this world just as he is too intelligent and well-intentioned for the bullfighting world where he remains out of loyalty to Gallardo. It is an extraordinary performance and one that gives Carradine a rare opportunity to show the real extent of his talent. Likewise for Power, whose performance carries the entire film and compels us to remain invested in a character with fatal personality flaws and a story whose ending we should know far in advance. Darnell is adequate; she seems to me an average actress well-directed, though I don't know her work well enough to say for sure. Nazimova is very "typical" in a way, but she pulls off what could have been a forgettable role. She has the wisdom that Gallardo and Carmen lack; not that men are stronger than women but that only sacrifice as represented by the Man-God Christ (and symbolized by Nacional) can show us the path through moral life. The violent and glamorous world of men, and the women who sustain themselves like vampires on the power of champions, will show no more mercy to yesterday's champions than the matador does the bull.