By Mike Wilmington Wilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on DVDs: The Moment of Truth
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH (Also Blu-ray) (Three and a Half Stars)
Italy/Spain: Francesco Rosi, 1965 (Criterion Collection)
Bullfighting is a sport concerned with the aesthetics of life and death, with the cruelty of man toward animal, with the deadliness of beast toward Man, and with the bloodlust of the crowd as they watch. As we watch. No movie I‘ve seen has shown it all better, recorded so fully and probed so deeply both the beauty and the sadism of bullfighting, than Francesco Rosi‘s 1965 The Moment of Truth.
Rosi’s film shows us real matadors and real fighting bulls, and a real crowd screaming for the kill. By the end of the film, after Rosi and the audience have followed a young bullfighter, Miguel or “Miguelin,” from provincial poverty all the way to fame in Barcelona and Madrid, to the brink of massacre, and to the moment of truth, of oblivion, that every matador, every bull, every screaming member of the crowd, must feel or face in their own ways — at the end of all that, in the presence of our God and a church, we sense that we‘ve seen not just seen an exotic entertainment, but that we’ve had a life experience. It’s a terrifying film, and a wondrous one, and, as you watch it, it drains your heart and guts, as it stares fiercely into the sun, like Kurosawa.
The star of the film is Miguel Mateo or “Miguelin,” a world-famous matador, then 26, who also had almost improbable movie star good looks. Miguelin here plays a handsome, determined young bullfighter named Miguel Romero, partly patterned on Miguel himself, and partly modeled on the traditional novel/movie “Blood and Sand” myth of the young matador who rises up from the crowd, tastes fame and glory, and faces death once too often. Because Miguel is an actual matador, actually fighting (and killing, and endangered by) the bulls, the fighting scenes have a gripping authenticity matched only by the bullfighting scenes shot by ex-matador Budd Boetticher of bullfighter Carlos Arruza, for Budd’s legendary documentary Arruza.
Miguel’s grace in the arena — that quality bullfighting aficionado Ernest Hemingway called “grace under pressure” — carries a real double charge of ecstasy and dread here, of sensuality and terror, of obsession and disgust.
We know that Miguel could die in the arena, and that his opponent the bull, almost certainly will die, and this constant proximity of fatality makes the fight scenes both awful and awesome, lamentable and transfixing. I can sympathize with anyone who will not want to see The Moment of Truth precisely because of the cruelty to animals and the danger to humans, and the angst and death which are its subjects. Their number, by the way, includes Moment of Truth’s original cinamatographer Gianni Di Venanzo, who was deeply disturbed by what he had to shoot and was replaced eventually by Pasquale De Santis.
Here is death, before our eyes: its pain, its certainty. The twirl of a red cape, the deception, the charge of the bull (already wounded, already in pain), the setting of the sword, up, up, now the stare, the eye, injury and death only seconds away.
The overall story and drama of The Moment of Truth are familiar but, we suspect, truthful. Young Miguel goes to the city, takes bullfighting lessons from the master, Pedrucho (played by Pedrucho Basauri), attracts the eye of an impresario Don Ernesto (played by Don Ernesto), joins the group of toreros (played by real toreroes) quickly becomes a star in the ring, lives the high life with, among others, real-life actress/playgirl Linda Christian, (playing “Linda”). He fights, whirls, lives a moment more. The “Oles“ pour down. He makes a mistake, but recovers. And then….Inevitably…
Rosi began his career as Luchino Visconti’s assistant director on the great Sicilian neo-realist epic La Terra Trema. (Visconti’s other assistant was Franco Zeffirelli.) The Moment of Truth is, in way, a neo-realist film itself. It suggests somehow a Terra Trema mixed with La Dolce Vita. Rosi, a leftist political cineaste, but also a poet, shows us here real life, real people, a real world. Much of Truth is shot documentary style, but without an omniscient narrator. Rosi, like any great film realist, opens our eyes. What we see hurts.
Most sports movies are a bit sentimental. But some bullfighting movies, like some great boxing films, are among the few that touch the edge of tragedy. Of grace. Savagery. Adoration. Death. “In the afternoon,” as Hemingway said. The bull, death, the sword, only inches away. Ole, Miguelin. Ole, Rosi. They caught something on film others fear and dream about. Saw what some wish never to see. But the blood will always be there, no matter how many times you look away.
Extras: Video interview with Francesco Rosi; booklet with essay by Peter Matthews.
