La dame et le toréador

This was Boetticher's big breakthrough, though it's not remembered nearly as well as the Westerns he made later on the same decade. I'm sure that's very much the fault of its subject matter, which is rightly despised by the vast majority of human beings nowadays. Frankly, the film itself is pretty lousy in general. Robert Stack stars as an American visiting Mexico who decides to take up bullfighting to impress a beautiful woman (Joy Page). He befriends a famous toreador (Gilbert Roland) who trains him, though he's derided by other bullfighters and fans. The film was originally cut down to 87 minutes (after all, it was only meant to be a B-movie), but it has recently been restored to 124 minutes. I'd definitely much rather watched the shorter version, though I'm sure it's just as dull (just not so damn long). The bullfighting scenes are graphic, but, what's worse, the sport just comes off as a total bore itself, like the same thing over and over. Katy Jurado also stars.