Roter Staub (1956)

Roter Staub: Directed by Irving Rapper. With Michel Ray, Rodolfo Hoyos Jr., Elsa Cárdenas, Carlos Navarro. A young Mexican boy tirelessly tries to save his pet bull from death at the hands of a celebrated matador.

“This is the story of a young Mexican peasant boy who comes across a cow that is dying beneath a fallen tree branch and saves the calf she is birthing; a strong bond is established between the boy and the calf, a bond that persists as the calf turns into an aggressive bull that is being groomed for the the bullring. This bellicose beast is referred to as being u0026quot;braveu0026quot; in this film.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOwnership of the bull is a subject of debate throughout the film and at one point the boy gains an audience with the Mexican President to try to resolve the issue. Outside of the story being utterly preposterous, I had no problem with it.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis was filmed in Mexico in CinemaScope using highly saturated colors. There are some beautiful scenes of rural Mexico as well as a tour of Mexico City. The sweeping score by Victor Young invites grand emotion, but it stuck me as too exuberant, in the style of many scores of 1950s movies. The acting is uniformly wooden.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe highlights of the film are the captivating, and extended, bull fighting scenes. No matter what your opinion is of this controversial sport, it will be hard for you not to recognize its appeal based on these scenes. When an American visitor to Mexico expresses her dismay about the sport, her Mexican host notes that boxing and fox hunting are accepted, so why not bullfighting? He goes on to say that Mexicans know that death is never very far away, but that Americans are outraged by pain and, as for death, they may pass a law against it at any time.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWhat attracted me to this movie was seeing that it is based on an Oscar-winning story by Dalton Trumbo. The movie credits the story to one u0026quot;Robert Rich,u0026quot; who was a front for Trumbo during the period of his being blacklisted during the McCarthy era (when Trumbo appeared before a Congressional committee and was threatened with a Contempt of Congress citation for not answering questions, he told the committee that that would be appropriate, since he had nothing but contempt for them). After having seen other movies with strong themes based on Trumbo screenplays, such as u0026quot;Lonely are the Brave,u0026quot; u0026quot;Papillon,u0026quot; and u0026quot;Spartacus,u0026quot; I was looking forward to this film, but it does not live up to the quality of those. I was puzzled as to how Trumbo could have lapsed into such sentimentality, but then it occurred to me that he must have identified with the bull who defied attempts to be constrained and ultimately prevailed, just as Trumbo himself.”