CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

MissSimonetta When it comes to Blood and Sand (1922), I like Valentino's sensual, sensitive performance as the ill-fated matador and Nita Naldi is fun, if a little over-the-top, as his evil mistress, but this film is too preachy, undercutting the tragedy of the story. I also feel there's a misogynistic undercurrent, where women are sorted in the ingénue/vamp dichotomy (Nita Naldi is the wicked woman who enjoys sex and lures Valentino away from Lila Lee, his innocent and sexually modest wife) and men are expected to have "a good love and a bad love."Still, the production values are nice and this is one of Valentino's better performances, a step up from his kitschy Wile E. Coyote histrionics in The Sheik (1921). And yet still, I'd rather watch The Sheik over this, as it's a lot more fun. Blood and Sand is a drag.

Steffi_P One of the most persistent trends in cinema is the phenomenon of the actor as desirable icon rather than talented performer. This was especially common in the silent era, when appearances were everything, and by far the biggest such icon of that era was Mr Rudolph Valentino. No-one in their right mind would have called Valentino a great actor, but the public flocked to his films, adoring him for his smooth and charmingly exotic good looks, or reviling him for them as far as the heterosexual men in the audience were concerned.But unlike a rather different screen icon Douglas Fairbanks, whose pictures were as lighthearted as his persona, Valentino's vehicles were often stern and lengthy dramas. Therefore in a picture like Blood and Sand we have something of a mismatch between star and subject matter. Sure, Valentino looks the part of the popular young matador, but he just doesn't have the acting ability to carry a drama. Funnily enough, the haircut he has here, which does not suit him, makes him look like Keanu "Man-o'-Wood" Reeves, which is appropriate since his acting is on a par with Reeves's. Like Reeves, all of Valentino's expressions look strangely vacant, as if his facial muscles were being mechanically operated by some unseen puppet master. It is, in fact, rather unattractive to anyone who has seen much finer acting from performers who are equally as physically beautiful as Valentino.So taking Rudi out of the equation, what kind of a drama do we have left? The fact that Blood and Sand is adapted from a novel is not an especially good sign considering the time it was made. In this day and age when film versions of novels tend to get lambasted for the cavalier approach to their adaptation, it may come as a surprise that in the silent era most adaptations were not cavalier enough. This version leaves in too much of Ibanez's tedious moralising. There is also the inclusion of the characters of the bandit Plumitas and the philosopher Ruiz, a kind of Greek chorus device that may have worked quite well in the book, but on screen it is just a contrived distraction, slowing down the picture's pace.Fortunately, the director here is Fred Niblo, a competent and sensitive craftsman of the silent screen. Niblo was a real master of managing pace, and this is the area in which he seems to have exerted most influence over Blood and Sand. He gives the earliest scenes of Gallardo's youth a kind of free-spirited exuberance, with very open sets and lots of background motion. He also treats the star to an attention grabbing entrance, his face appearing from behind a gate as a bull rushes past. In the later scenes of the matador's spiritual fall from grace, proceedings are given a stylised and eerily sensual slowness. Languid, flowing imagery is something of a Niblo trademark and he really gets to indulge it here, with long unbroken takes, curls of smoke and an almost snake-like performance from Nita Naldi. There are some wonderful shots in this section, such as the one where Naldi sits at her harp. The harp on the left and the curtain on the right provide a complementary slanting frame for the lovers' embrace. Like the films of Cecil B. DeMille, there is a paradox in Blood and Sand in that the sexual immorality which it ostensibly condemns is presented the most appealingly to the viewers.The main aim of Niblo's direction however appears to have been to show off the star, which is fair enough - it's what sold tickets. But sadly Valentino's appeal has not aged well. The result is a rather weedy drama, with a few pretty images, and a handsome man failing to act. None of his supporting players stand out (exception: Walter Lang is rather amusing when he is trying to remember how many men he is killed. And Leo White gets an honourable mention simply because he used to be an amazing comedy actor, and here and there we can still see flashes of his greatness). Valentino no doubt thought of himself as a serious dramatic player, and it appears he used what leverage he had over his own career to get roles like this, but looking back his most satisfying pictures are ones like The Sheikh and The Eagle, where his romantic charms can be enjoyed in an appropriately fairy-tale setting.

hte-trasme "Blood and Sand" tells us many times how cruel and dangerous it believes bullfighting to be, but in terms of what it actually shows us, it seems far more interested in the romantic qualities of Rudolph Valentino and his larger-than-life love triangle.Valentino gives a legitimately good performance, but even the love story loses some of its immediacy from the fact that "Blood and Sand" takes its subject at some distance, periodically stepping back and focusing on the scholar who foreshadows the matador's end. This also allows some of the characterization to go without being fully realized. When all is said and done it is neither believable as an anti-bullfighting film nor totally involving as a story of a love triangle, but some of the elements, including the performances and some excellent symbolic imagery, are well realized.

lugonian BLOOD AND SAND (Paramount, 1922), directed by Fred Niblo, stars silent screen legend Rudolph (billed Rodolph) Valentino in one of his most celebrated roles as a bullfighter from the suburbs of Seville whose rise to fame eventually puts his life into a different direction. While the title might indicate violence at the beach, such as sunbathers and swimmers encountering shark attacks, (director Steven Spielberg took care of that with his 1975 hit, JAWS), the movie only lives up to its name towards the end of the story. Set in Spain, the plot revolves around Juan Gallardo (Rudolph Valentino), also known as "Zapaterin" (The Little Shoemaker), who longs to become a famous matador in spite of the protests from his widowed mother (Rosa Rosanova) wanting her son to have a more safer profession by following his late father's trade working as a shoemaker, but that doesn't go well with him. As his dreams become reality, Juan, having made a name for himself, is reunited with Carmen Espinosa (Lila Lee), his childhood playmate now back home from convent school. The two marry, and as he rises to the top of his profession, Juan offers her wealth and happiness. Things start to change as Juan meets and succumbs to the passionate charms of Dona Sol (Nita Naldi), niece of the Marquis De Moraimas (George Pierlot).Of the supporting players featuring George Field as El Nacional; Rosita Marsiti as Encarnacion; Leo White as Antonio; Fred Becker as Don Jose; among others, the character who is most essential to the story is Don Joselito (Charles Belcher), a philosopher, whose home is surrounded with ancient instruments of torture (superimposed with people strapped and tied to these devises). He writes recorded documents about various people who interest him, and what is to become of them, namely Juan and his bandit friend, Plumitas (Walter Long), whose backgrounds differ but with parallel professions (Juan kills bulls while Plumitas kills men), each are to have similar ends. Joselito writes this about Juan, "Juan Gallardo has reached his goal. Will success spoil him or will his love for little Carmen overcome the plaudits of the populace and the cruelty of the national sport?" The now familiar Vicente Blasco Ibanez story was remade successfully and memorably by 20th Century-Fox in 1941 starring Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell and Rita Hayworth in the Valentino, Lee and Naldi roles. Longer than its predecessor, the remake includes a lengthy opening tracing the early life of Juan as a boy while the Valentino original centers upon his Juan as an adult, with very little about his upbringing, thus, being mostly a dramatic story on the personal life of an acclaimed matador. In spite of its premise, BLOOD AND SAND consists of limited bullfighting scenes, compared to several used in the remake, each featuring memorable love scenes between Juan and his mistress, Dona Sol. While Nita Naldi's performance might come off as campy, Rita Hayworth's interpretation is most alluring. Fred Niblo's direction may be slow going at times, but manages to bring the culture and Spain to life, especially with their afternoon recreation as they are seem being entertained by watching a good bullfight. Ole! Ole!Because of his early death in 1926 at age 31, the Valentino name has become immortal. BLOOD AND SAND, along with THE FOUR HOURSEMEN OF THE APOCALYSE (1921), THE SHEIK (1921) and its sequel, THE SON OF THE SHEIK (1926) have become notable titles that best personify the Valentino legend, yet, television revivals have become rare. BLOOD AND SAND did become one of the thirteen movies presented on public television's weekly series of "The Silent Years" (1971), hosted by Orson Welles, with film print from the Paul Killiam collection,accompanied by a piano score by William Perry, the print used for the Blackhawk (later Republic Home Video) distribution during the early 1990s. At one point, BLOOD AND SAND was shown on cable television on the Nostalgia Channel around 1993-4 as part of its Saturday evening showing of "When Silents Was Golden." A decade later, KINO VIDEO restored BLOOD AND SAND with clearer picture quality and corrected silent film speed, as well as some restored footage missing from the standard 82 minutes (including the opening of the Paramount logo), thus, moving its length up to 110 minutes. The KINO print is accompanied by a new score by Rodney Sauer and the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. But beware of shorter prints running at 62 minutes, the abridged print that played on numerous occasions on Turner Classic Movies' "Silent Sunday Nights" prior to 2000.BLOOD AND SAND is classic Valentino at best. Aside from playing a young man with ambition, a tango dancer, and a lover of women (although a title card earlier in the story has him saying "I hate all women except one"), Valentino is perfectly cast as the bullfighter of Seville, and that's no bull. Viva, Valentino!