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"A test for the fighting spirit." "The men or the animals?" The matador (Mel Ferrer) was once a humble peasant, he now favors shades before a fickle public and sweats from nightmares, "bulls, horns, coffins." Parasites, glad-handers, floozies, journalists, the manager (Anthony Quinn) along the divide of friendship and exploitation. Behind the gallant pose, paralyzing fear out of a Poe character. The corrida in concurrence with Boetticher (The Bullfighter and the Lady), no sport but "an ancient art designed to show the glory of courage over the power of death." The adoring brother (Eugene Iglesias) who hopes to follow in his footsteps, the fur-swathed blonde (Miroslava Stern) who might rouse him out of existential torpor. The Robert Rossen athlete, so clenched with anguish that he gazes at the horizon and picks a fight with the dawn: "Come on, tomorrow. What are you waiting for?" Noble rituals cannot cloak the stark cycles of supply and demand, passionate subjects chilled by the saturnine outlook. Italian neorealism is taken into stock with newsreel street views, the car crash described is later seen in Le Mépris. "A man who has bred a brave bull has bred a quality without measure—a spirit that may be tested only in the destruction of it." Floyd Crosby and James Wong Howe in Mexico, not a tourist's lens, "dry and lonesome. Very dry and very lonesome." Sunday trumpets at the arena, though not before doubt and dread Saturday night in a dark hotel room, fireworks out the window and crucifix above the bedpost. The ending revisits Body and Soul in gored sequin pants, Rosi's The Moment of Truth takes it from there. With José Torvay, Charlita, Jose Luis Vasquez, Alfonso Alvirez, Alfredo Aguilar, Francisco Reiguera, Eduardo Arozamena, and Fanny Schiller. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |