Suds and Bland

Another of the movies that started showing up in the FXM rotation within the last couple of months is Blood and Sand. It's going to be on again tomorrow at 6:00 AM, so over the weekend I sat down to watch it to do a post here.

Tyrone Power, with an awful hairdo most of the time, plays Juan Gallardo, but we'll get to that later, because he doesn't show up until maybe a half hour into the movie. The beginning of the film is a long prologue about Juan and his friends as kids. Little Juan is into bullfighting because his father was a professional bullfighter. Mom (Alla Nazimova, credited under her surname only) is not one bit happy with this, because Dad died as a result of injuries sustained in the bullring, and god knows she doesn't want that to happen to her son.

Anyhow, Juan goes running at night to try to practice fighting bulls, and eventually grows up with his gang of friends to leave their provincial Spanish town to head for Madrid which is apparently the center of bullfighting. Charismatic Juan is the leader of the group, who work together as a team, and return home at the end of the season to what Juan thinks should be fame and fortune. In fact, he (and apparently nobody else in the group) can read, because they don't realize that the great critic Curro (Laird Cregar) has savaged them.

Now as adults, in the group are Juan; Manolo (Anthony Quinn), who is the one person who's liable to stand up to Juan; Garabato (J. Carrol Naish); and El Nacional (John Carradine), a committed socialist who decries bullfighting and constantly vows to retire after the upcoming season. They don't get a heroes' welcome when the return to Sevilla, but they do find that Juan's childhood friend Carmen (Linda Darnell) has waited for him. They do eventually get married, although Juan would have preferred to be a little more successful before marrying Carmen.

Back in the bullfighting ring, at one of the bullfights there's a captivating young woman in the front row box seats named Doña Sol (Rita Hayworth). Juan unsurprisingly accepts flowers from her, but he also throws her his hat. She sends him a letter telling him where he can retrieve it, but since he can't read, Carmen has to read the letter to him, so she knows what's about to happen. Frankly, the audience should know too, which is that Juan goes without bringing Carmen, spends an evening with Doña Sol, and falls in love with her.

While neglecting his wife, Juan is, one can guess, neglecting practice too, as he rises through the ranks and his arrogance grows with his status. It leads to Manolo leaving the group, ultimately to become the next big matador (but with shades of Eve Harrington), while El Nacional gets killed in what he claimed was going to be his last bullfight (for different reasons). Can Juan reconcile with his wife?

Blood and Sand is a movie that, despite the potential for interesting material and interesting bullfighting footage, turns out to be surprisingly bland. The sporting hero's downfall storyline has been done better in any number of movies (Kirk Douglas' Champion comes to mind), while there's not much in the way of exciting bullfighting here. The movie is also slow, clocking in at a little over two hours. The only thing it really has going for it is the Technicolor photography. Or, if it's your thing, Tyrone is shirtless in several scenes.

Blood and Sand is based on a novel published in 1909, which explains the time period that's never quite mentioned but seems slightly old fashioned. The book had already been made into a movie in the silent era, starring Rudolph Valentino. That film is readily available on DVD. The Tyrone Power Blood and Sand only seems to be on DVD courtesy of a region-free Korean import, but it does also seem to be available on Prime video. Also, don't confuse it with Spartacus: Blood and Sand, which has nothing to do with this story.