Blood and Sand

Blood and Sand (1941) is a Technicolor melodrama from director Rouben Mamoulian — watch online on iFILM. Tyrone Power plays Juan Gallardo, a bullfighter who pulls himself up from nothing and reaches the top of the Spanish arenas, right when Doña Sol walks in.

Rita Hayworth plays her, and the film knows exactly what that casting means. Juan has Carmen waiting for him — Linda Darnell, the woman who believed in him before the fame — but Doña Sol isn't offering love so much as something that looks like it. Anthony Quinn and J. Carroll Naish appear in supporting roles, and the story comes from Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's 1908 novel: a moral fable about desire and consequence in the ring.

Cinematographers Ernest Palmer and Ray Rennahan took the Oscar for Best Color Cinematography, and the frame earns it. Mamoulian used Technicolor as argument — the red capes against dark stands, the gold of Juan's traje de luces, the shadow before the kill. Color does the emotional work the dialogue doesn't need to. Stream Blood and Sand (1941) online on iFILM.