Blood And Sand (1941)

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Theatrical Release: May 30, 1941

Blu Ray Release: July 9, 2013

Rating: UnRated!

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian

Review by Tim Bodzioney

Blood and Sand turned out to be a more interesting, if flawed, movie than I had imagined.  It’s a remake of Fred Niblo’s 1922 movie starring Rudolph Valentino, and both are based on Vicente Blasco Ibanez’ 1909 novel.  I hadn’t seen it before (on film, television, or video), so I went in expecting something similar to the previous year’s The Mark of Zorro, by the same producer and director.  The Mark of Zorro, like Michael Curtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, is an almost perfect Hollywood adventure movie.

Blood and Sand is not really an adventure movie however.  In fact, for a movie with bullfighting as its backdrop, it contains very little action.  And what bullfighting there is, is staged and cut in such a way that little of the sport’s innate brutality is exhibited onscreen.  At its core, it is a love story.  Indeed in some ways Blood and Sand is a typical Hollywood love story, a movie about the spiritually redemptive powers of love—but with undertones that hint at something darker.

The movie opens in the slums of Seville, Spain, with young Juan Gallardo dreaming of fame and fortune as a matador, like his father who died in the ring leaving his peasant family penniless.  Juan sneaks away at night to fight bulls on the estate of the local aristocrat. He is an untrained, yet natural bullfighter.  Juan and his friends leave Seville to seek success in Madrid.  Before leaving he pledges his love to Carmen, the daughter of the foreman of the estate.

Juan and his friends return successful ten years later.  He marries Carmen, and his career continues to rise until he falls prey to Dona Sol, the daughter of the local aristocrat.  His career and marriage fall apart, but at the end he is redeemed by his wife’s undying and faithful love.

Blood and Sand was directed by Rouben Mamoulian, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck (a rare on-screen producer credit), and written by Jo Swerling.  The movie has a wonderful cast---the love triangle at the film’s center is provided by Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, and Rita Hayworth.  The strong supporting cast includes Alla Nazimova (Juan’s mother), Anthony Quinn (Juan’s rival), J. Carrol Naish (a retired and beaten up matador who becomes part of Power’s entourage), John Carradine (one of Juan’s loyal friends), and Laird Cregar (a pompous and bloated bullfighting critic).  There are also a number of character roles essayed by actors familiar to any Hollywood movie fan.

Mamoulian is not a favorite with auteurist critics.  Andrew Sarris relegates him to the ‘Less Than Meets The Eye’ category in his book, The American Cinema.  Knowing and enjoying Mamoulian’s 1930’s work, I was originally going to write a defense of his distinguished, but largely forgotten career.  But after viewing Blood and Sand I began to wonder if perhaps the critics weren’t right.

Born in Russia, Mamoulian’s career started in the theater.  Like many others, including George Cukor, he was brought to Hollywood during the silent-to-sound transition.  Movie moguls seemed to think that silent directors didn’t know what to make of dialogue.

Mamoulian’s theater career is incredible unto itself—he staged the first productions of both the non-musical version of Dubois Heyward’s Porgy as well as Gershwin’s opera of the same story, Porgy and Bess.  He also helmed both Oklahoma and Carousel.  In 1948 Mamoulian directed the original production of the Maxwell Anderson/Kurt Weil musical, Lost in the Stars.

His early film work at Paramount is noted for its experimentation.  His use of sound, movement, and later color stand out.  Paramount must have been a good fit for Mamoulian in this period.  His moving subjective camera work in the still shocking 1932’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde buries the notion that early sound films were static and un-cinematic.  Love Me Tonight is an elegant Lubitsch imitation.  After leaving Paramount he directs one of the best Garbo vehicles, Queen Christina for MGM.   Back at Paramount he guides Dietrich in The Song of Songs, her first film away from Sternberg since their teaming in 1929.  At RKO in 1935 Mamoulian directed the first three-strip Technicolor feature, Becky Sharpe.  He finishes the 1930’s at Columbia with Clifford Odet’s Golden Boy starring Barbara Stanwyck and pre-stardom William Holden; a pretty impressive decade.  If film noir is what German expressionism evolved into, than Rouben Mamoulian’s 1930’s work is one of the form’s missing links.

The 1940’s started off well for Mamoulian; a Fox contract that was kicked off with the rousing, financially successful Zorro.  Blood and Sand may hint at some of reasons why his career took a downturn in the 1940’s.  After Blood and Sand Mamoulian only completes three features, while being fired from three major projects (Laura, Porgy and Bess, and Cleopatra) over the next twenty years.  Otto Preminger, who originally was only the producer of Laura, claims he fired Mamoulian from the picture due to on-set script changes as well as slow pacing.  I wonder if these problems plagued Blood and Sand and whether Zanuck was too preoccupied with the upcoming war.

With the talent listed above, one would think the credits for Blood and Sand sounds like a recipe for a great movie—it isn’t.  Blood and Sand is in many ways all over the map.  It never quite makes up its mind as to what it is.  It feels as if the film is being pulled simultaneously in several directions.  At times this works within the Hollywood system —the right combination of disparate, sometimes conflicting, visions coming together to produce a great movie.  Many of the great movies of directors such as John Ford or Frank Capra came from working with writers and producers who were at ideological odds with the directors.  At other times projects that seem routine or worse, like Casablanca, become enduring classics due to the collaborative professionalism of the studio system.  In the case of Blood and Sand, it may be a simple case of too many chefs.

 Blood and Sand could be seen as a bullfighting version of the gangster/Depression- era movies produced and sometimes written by Zanuck while he was at Warners.  But unlike those fast, efficient (usually under 75 minutes) movies, Blood and Sand at over two hours seems bloated and in some ways, in spite of its length, underdeveloped.  Why does the film bother with all the sidekicks when none of their characters, with the exception of the Carradine character, really contribute to the film?  One certainly expects a much greater conflict than is delivered between Power and Quinn.  Juan’s shrewish sister and buffoonish brother-in-law are one-dimensional parasites.

Even the love story doesn’t fully deliver because Juan never seems to be too conflicted about straying from his wife’s pure love until his life starts unraveling.  Then there’s the relationship with Dona Sol—she’s portrayed as a voracious man-eater and the worst we see is her pretending to be a matador while Juan plays the bull.  Sure, this, like bullfighting, is about domination, but I was expecting a little more along the lines of Stroheim or Sternberg.  It’s pretty tame stuff, even for the era.

The film is prescient in its depiction of the fickle nature of fame and the ruthless consumption of uneducated professional athletes.  Associates, friends, and family take advantage of the illiterate Juan throughout the movie, due to his lack of education.  The bullfighting critic Curro is like a contemporary gossip columnist moving from one meal ticket to the next, never thinking about those used and broken discarded bullfighters.

Visually the film is quite stunning as photographed by Ernest Palmer and Ray Rennahan.  Mamoulian is said to have based the look of the movie on paintings by Spanish masters.  And he continues to indulge in Technicolor expressionism, which seems to be a holdover from the Paramount lot.  There are shots of darkness pierced by a single light source—not exactly the same use of Technicolor that Fox would employ on their Betty Grable pictures.  It’s never boring to look at.

The transfer is about as good as these compromised Fox titles can be.  The colors look pretty good—outdoor scenes boast a different pallet than the typical Fox Technicolor opus.  It tends to warmer colors than the cooler blues typical of Fox movies of the era.  The moody indoor scenes suffer a bit more due to the lack of original elements.  The Blu-Ray is better than the DVD because the blacks and contrast hold together better.  But the transfer is still a far cry from something struck from original elements, but good given what they have to work with.  The mono sound is clear.

Blood and Sand was produced at the peak of the Hollywood studio system.  The studios churned out product (features, shorts, cartoons, serials, newsreels, etc.) to masses that today’s executives can only dream of.  When running on all pistons the work could be remarkable.  Blood and Sand unfortunately, does not rise to that level.  The reason for this may lie somewhere in the producer/director/writer triumvirate.   It certainly isn’t due to the cast and craftsmen.   Taken in parts the movie has several worthwhile aspects – the whole just doesn’t equal the parts.

[Rating: 2.5]