The New Pictures

Blood and Sand (20th Century-Fox). As Novelist Vicente Blasco Ibanez described him, Juan Gallardo was a matador who believed that bulls and women were created for the sole purpose of giving him glory and pleasure. A poor boy who came up the hard way, he was the idol of Spain's bull rings and boudoirs until a disrespectful bull punctured his vast ego with a well-directed horn. He died bitterly within the sound of the fight fans acclaiming their new hero of the afternoon.

When sexy Rudolph Valentino transferred the best-selling hero of Blood and Sand to celluloid, 19 years ago, he had an instinctive understanding of the part. In many ways his own career paralleled Juan's. An obscure and hungry Italian immigrant, he had become the most extensively worshiped matinee idol in the history of the theater. His kindred feeling for Juan Gallardo made the matador's tragedy seem real. His performance produced a character who was a shining, dominant personality in the arena, a vulgar poseur out of it.

This interpretation was obviously out of reach of the modulated 1941 counterpart of Valentino--downy, dark-eyed Tyrone Power. In Producer Darryl Zanuck's expensive, Technicolored remake of Blood and Sand, nice Mr. Power acts as if he were just acting. He is. Tyrone Power, as many a U.S. female knows, is cute. Neither Juan Gallardo nor Rudolph Valentino nor any other Latin male was ever cute.

Perforce Director Rouben Mamoulian substitutes spectacle and color for the story in Blood and Sand II. His film artfully goes from low to high key as it takes its color tone from the palettes of the Spanish masters: the somber browns of Murillo for the opening sequence; the shade and shine of Sorolla for the market scenes; El Greco's eerie greens in the chapel; Velasquez' black & white for the banquet; and the rich red & gold of Goya for the arena.

In one infirmary scene the color-struck director dyed the white sheets green, hued the actors' faces with green spotlights. To keep the green flowers and vegetables from clashing with his black- & -white banquet scene, he dyed them black. To give clothes and props the oily texture of a painting, he tinted them with spray guns.

Result of this paint-pot parade is the best Technicolor job out of Hollywood to date. But paint is no substitute for dramatic action. Out of the tiresome rhetoric, the pretty posturing of Blood and Sand only the bullfight scenes stand out. One of them is magnificent: a little Mexican boy named Jesus Angel, clad in a breech clout, armed solely with a white horse blanket, hazing a big black bull around a practice plaza de toros in the moonlight.

To spare the handsome hide of Matador Power, Armillita, the Babe Ruth of Mexican matadors, bats for him in the bullfight scenes. Last week Armillita was doing double duty. While U.S. cinemaddicts watched his classic cape-work in Blood and Sand, Mexicans beheld it in an equally new but quite different picture -- a Posa Films production starring Mexico's fun niest comedian, Cantinflas. Its title: Neither Blood Nor Sand.

The coincidence of the two bullfight pictures and their titles is just that, according to Posa's President, Santiago Reachi. No parody of Tyrone Power's vehicle was intended.

Designed to display the serio-comic talents of Cantinflas, Neither Blood Nor Sand is in most ways the opposite of Blood and Sand. The hero, unlike Mr. Power, is no beauty. He is a slim, swart, rumpled fellow with a puckish face and a Cheshire cat smile. Like Juan Gallardo, his beginnings are humble. He is hawking cigars one day outside the bull ring when chance lets him slip into the arena. A beautiful senorita in the next seat saves him from ejection. She is the girl friend of the head matador, and Cantinflas is a dead ringer for her hero.

Things take a difficult turn when the dark-eyed beauty's lover is gored by a bull. She hurries after him, leaving her purse behind. In the act of returning the purse, Cantinflas is mistaken for his mata dor double. At the senorita's hacienda, which breeds fighting bulls, he is persuaded to exhibit his prowess with one of them. This he does, strangely enough, to the satisfaction of everybody, including Mexican cinemagoers, who were fit to bust a gusset last week at the clowning of the sub-Rio Grande version of W. C. Fields.

Like Blood and Sand, which is scheduled for a heavy South-American showing, Neither Blood Nor Sand is due to cross the Rio Grande soon for a Los Angeles opening. Between them the two films should provide the hemisphere with all the bullfighting it can take for the present.

They also offer an interesting comparison of the acting styles of the U.S.'s favorite period piece and Mexico's favorite comedian.

CURRENT & CHOICE

Major Barbara (Wendy Hiller, Rex Harrison, Robert Morley, Robert Newton; TIME, June 2).

A Woman's Face (Joan Crawford, Conrad Veidt, Melvyn Douglas; TIME, May 26).

Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, Dorothy Comingore, Joseph Gotten, Everett Sloane; TIME, March 17).

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