Blood and Sand is an allegory of a man's pride, lust and ambition, who is redeemed by the love of a good woman and a death ennobled by regret. In other words, the movie is a Hollywood weeper. At just over two hours, it's way too long. Still, it shows what can be accomplished when professionals take hold of a teary melodrama and give it color, sleekness, sex and, at 27, an extraordinarily handsome leading man in Tyrone Power. Rita Hayworth, as the femme fatale, is almost as pretty.

Young Juan Gallardo, poor and illiterate, dreams of becoming a famed matador. As a young man (Tyrone Power), he achieves his goal, along with the friendship of men he knew when they were children and the love of his childhood sweetheart, Carmen (Linda Darnell). But fame and money can bring superficial values, and Juan's head is turned with a vengeance. He becomes a great matador, but spends money freely, ignores his old friends in favor of hangers-on and, even worse, he forgets the love of Carmen, now his wife, for the lush and erotic charms of Dona Sol (Rita Hayworth). Although Carmen is lovely, she spends much time looking either compassionate or sad. Dona Sol, or at least Rita Hayworth, is another matter entirely. Hayworth, in a white, form-fitting gown, is something to see as one evening she strolls with perfect posture and a perfect chest toward the poor sap Juan. He doesn't have a chance. In time, his skills become dull and Dona Anna finds him dull and moves on. At last he rediscovers his values and his roots. Wouldn't you know it, just when he restates his love for Carmen, he meets this one particular bull in his last fight. It has two very sharp horns. Music up, lights down, hankies out.

The movie seems to go on and on. We spend almost half an hour on Juan's boyhood before Tyrone Power shows up as a young man. It's nearly an hour before we encounter Rita Hayworth. For Hayworth, the wait is worth it. Her character is selfish, rich, beautiful and all the things a teenaged boy's erotic dreams are made of. This was Hayworth's first color movie and she knocks 'em dead. Says Natalio Curro (Laird Cregar), the effete and envious newspaper bullfight critic, "If this," gesturing at the bullfight arena, "is death in the afternoon, she," gesturing to Dona Sol, "is death in the evening." Towards the end of the movie Hayworth does a dance in a cantina with Anthony Quinn (as an upcoming bullfighter Dona Ana is about to leave Juan for) which is charged with sex.

What redeems the movie, in my opinion, is the professional gloss Darryl F. Zanuck and his team gave the film. At this point Tyrone Power was emerging as a box office power house for 20th Century Fox. Zanuck saw to it that Power was surrounded by the studio's best. The entire look of the film, from the poor village where Juan came from, to Dona Ana's luxurious estate, from street scenes to the arena itself is framed beautifully. Everything has that detailed, lavish, almost awe-inspiring perfection that only highly skilled professionals and a lot of studio money can provide. Color is used to create particular palettes for key scenes, often considerably more subtle than the garishness of many early Technicolor films. The actors all do fine jobs. Power, as usual, is earnest, but with his looks it works. Linda Darnell, obviously being groomed by how carefully she is lit and photographed, hasn't much to do but does it well. It's always good to see Laird Cregar being loathsome, and J. Carrol Naish and John Carradine as two old friends are authentic and don't overact. Anthony Quinn in an important role without much screen time makes an impression. And Rita Hayworth almost stops the movie every time she shows up.

Considering that bull fighting is a bloody business, where some people believe killing is an art and courage is not cheapened by spectacle, the movie goes to great lengths not to show us the reality of the picadors slicing into the bull's neck muscles, the animal's blood seeping down its sides, the occasional disemboweling of a picador's horse by the bull, the gorings of the matadors or the sword thrust into the neck of the bull which all too often doesn't kill cleanly and leaves the bull thrashing and trying to stand. The movie does give us a picture of the drama, the man versus animal contest, the roaring blood lust of the crowd and the inner workings of the arena. The average Roman citizen from 150 A.D. might have found it too tame, but he would have appreciated the intentions.

"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.

Uneducated peasant Juan Gallardo rises to fame and fortune in the bullfight arena. From here he falls for the socially active Dona Sol; thus breaking the heart of his childhood sweetheart Carmen. Nevertheless she stands by her man as he continues to face danger in the bullring, but ego and love will give Juan his biggest fight of all.

This remake of the 1922 silent Rudolph Valentino picture is certainly a lavish production, the colour cinematography by Ernest Palmer & Ray Rennahan rightly won the Academy Award, and it's directed with adroit skill by Roublen Mamoulian. The story is a great one as well, following the rise of Gallardo (a solid if too staid Tyrone Power) is always intriguing, and it's watching his constant battle with his emotions that is the film's drawing card. However, there can be a case made for the film resting too much on its dialogue driven laurels, for far too many times I personally found myself hankering for an up turn in pace to help emphasise the emotional nature of the characters.

The cast do OK without really excelling, Rita Hayworth looks gorgeous and a fine career blossomed from here on in, while Linda Darnell as the other love interest glides nicely from scene to scene. Anthony Quinn takes the best supporting honours, where his Manolo is vigorous with a cheeky glint in the eye, whilst sadly John Carradine is underused and his Nacional is not fully fleshed out until its far too late.

It's at times sexy (damn flamenco always a winner to me), it's got guts, and it looks absolutely gorgeous, but it's not quite the whole classy package it could have been. 7/10