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37
5The PICTURE of the Month
BLOOD
&
l^ECOMMENDING a photoplay to persons who seldom attend a picture theatre, whose tastes are uncloyed by the muck of the average production, carries greater responsibilities than making the picture. Because mistakes of an author or director are forgiven if followed by a triumph ; but a weather-vane that points north when the wind comes from the south will forever after find its reliability doubted when the wind blows from the south. In these terms, Blood and Sand can be compared to big pictures of past months: it is not a howling hurricane but a spanking thirty-mile breeze.
The biggest thing in favor of it is that it came from the same author as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (V. Blasco Ibanez) ; the next most pleasing fact is that it is not a happyending, kiss-and-fadeout film. Although worshippers of the great Ro
— Paramount
dolf Valentino may not croon with delight at the tragic climax, it can be safely recommended for non-playgoers to cut their movie teeth on.
The billboards will inform you of breathless scenes of bullring*encounters. You will not be disappointed in these scenes. They are vivid. A real arena (Mexico City), earnest beasts and Valentino actually functioning as a matador before a huge, cheering gallery provides color and novelty. This is the setting in which the author has thrust an obscure Spanish youth with a gift for bull-fighting, who becomes intoxicated by sudden fortune and the plaudits of sycophants and is drawn to ruin and death by a destructive passion.
Juan Gallardo (Valentino), the daring matador, takes a modest bride in the dawn of his fame. In the full glare of his career he is consumed by a tragic infatuation for a queenly en
5 Jp you have never seen a motion picture or if you have wished to never see another, we recommend this page to your attention each month.
amorada. In learning the torture of loving two women, he will delight all modernists when he pleads :
"Mi querida! You do not understand that in a man's life there is sometimes a good love and a bad love!"
The modernist will not find so much consolation in certain aphorisms that appear in sub-titles. For instance:
"Impure love, like a flame, burns out and leaves nothing but embers of disgust and regret."
"Woman was created to bring happiness to man. Instead, she destroyed the tranquility of the world."
Through the ages, the inhumanity of man has produced misery and tragedy. So the theme of the story is aimed at the cruelty of the arena. And the inhumanity of man bows to Divine decree when Gallardo, destroyed in the bull-ring, dies in the arms of his forgiving bride.