Criterion Newsletter (Part 2)

[felipe]

I believe this is the first time you guys can't find the answer for a Criterion clue.

[Cinephrenic]

The Moment of Truth (Il momento della verità)

[What A Disgrace]

Personally, I hope it isn't an Almodovar title.

[bamwc2]

Years ago, there was something in one of the speculation threads about Criterion having acquired rights to Almodovar's Matador. It was so long ago it may have even been on the predecessor of this Forum.

I believe that it was on the previous forum. If I remember correctly, the poster claimed both Matador and King of Kings were ready to be announced. This was before it had a region 1 release, so it sounded fairly plausible at the time. As it turned out, within a few days the latter film was officially announced, but not Matador. When I saw the clue in today's newsletter, I immediately thought of that post.

[Gobear]

The image of the bull-as-matador may well be Fail Safe, if only because of the repeated matador dream and the line at the end, "The matador. .. it's me!"

[gandskid]

Would love it if it was "The Bullfighter and the Lady." What a great film that is!!

[Hail_Cesar]

If its bullfight I hope for you guys that Criterion will manage to include the magnificent article of Bazin about it...

[ellipsis7]

Yes, The Moment of Truth...

More Rosi...

[Awesome Welles]

Great idea Jeff!

So, anyone who has seen the Rosi care to comment on it? Great/good/average/bad?

I've only seen this in Spanish without subtitles but I really liked it. This is quite different to Hands over the City or Salvatore Giuliano and I think marks something of a departure as Rosi really takes his documentary aesthetic much further here. His subject Miguel Mateo really was a bullfighter I believe and Rosi is transfixed with capturing him in the ring. There were long moments where I found the film riveting - I've literally never made so much noise watching a film, horror or documentary, as I gasped at the scenes of bullfighting (think Franju's Le sang des betes). The story seems to be quite run of the mill, like any American film of this ilk, farmer boy becomes famous sportsman/athlete/boxer etc. the trajectory is quite familiar but what is startling about Rosi's film is that there is so little time spent with the actor as we go through his emotions - it's all in the ring. The transition from local boy to bull fighter in training to more and more famous 'celebrity'is so slight, there is no wrestling with the pressures of fame, no agents and people on his back, no drug problems, women problems, family problems all the stuff we might find in a similar narrative. Rosi is all about showing one thing: the bullfighting, and a lot of the film is dialogue free as we just watch. There are moments where the bullfighting becomes an incredible poetic spectacle.

Spoiler

But this sepctacle has a horrific quality to it, where the bumps, knocks and sharp horns have an incredible dangerous reality to them, such as in the opening scene and entire last act where the blood flows and flows and flows all over the floor from nostrils (the bull's) and into pools.

With my limited Spanish I could only understand a few words and only really get a sense of the overall narrative so it's hard to know what Rosi is really trying to achieve here with the subtleties I have no doubt exist in the depiction of this world. I am sure there is a greater emphasis on why people bullfight, commentary on it's practice in Spanish culture, perhaps politics and fame too.

I won't blather on but I would be [very pleasantly] surprised if this film were coming on Blu-ray.

[BillWatkins]

Perhaps it's Robert Rossen's The Brave Bulls? Rossen's name is still listed on the Criterion site without a film tied to it.

[domino harvey]

Perhaps it's Robert Rossen's The Brave Bulls? Rossen's name is still listed on the Criterion site without a film tied to it.

Janus has Rossen's Alexander the Great, and it accidentally showed up on Crit's site a few months ago

[marnum]

The Matador (2005). Perhaps and maybe indeed.

[jwd5275]

The elusive double clue for Rosi's Moment of Truth and Almodovar's Matador...?

[swo17]

It's actually the first ever centuple clue for every single film that has ever featured a matador.

[Tom Hagen]

Limited edition Blu-ray box set includes A Moment of Truth and 192 other films, including:
The Bobo (1967)
Blood and Sand (1922)
The Magnificent Matador (1955)
Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
Bullfighter & the Lady (1950)
Torero (1956)
Bullfighters (1945)
Sand and Blood (1987)
Bolero (1984)
Blood and Sand (1989)
Blood and Sand (1941)
Matador (1986)
Jamon, Jamon (1993)
Around the World in 80 Days (1989)
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)
Talk to Her (2002)
Carnage (2002)
The Matador (2006)

MSRP $1,999.95

[Jun-Dai]

Limited edition Blu-ray box set includes A Moment of Truth and 192 other films, including:
The Bobo (1967)
Blood and Sand (1922)
The Magnificent Matador (1955)
Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
Bullfighter & the Lady (1950)
Torero (1956)
Bullfighters (1945)
Sand and Blood (1987)
Bolero (1984)
Blood and Sand (1989)
Blood and Sand (1941)
Matador (1986)
Jamon, Jamon (1993)
Around the World in 80 Days (1989)
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)
Talk to Her (2002)
Carnage (2002)
The Matador (2006)

MSRP $1,999.95

That's only $7 dollars per film or so with the typical Amazon discount. Where can I preorder?

[swo17]

Tom forgot the best feature: a deluxe, linen-bound, illustrated book featuring 700 pages of bull pictures.

[domino harvey]

15th anniversary edition of the What's Up Matador? special hosted by Bill Boggs (I can't believe there's no clips from this video on Youtube-- it's an indie rock infomercial for an audience of bored six year olds which leads to scenes like Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo trying to teach fuzz pedals to disinterested kids, and Jon Spencer humping a theremin)

[eerik]

It's a bull transforming into a robot. Transformers (2007). Perhaps and maybe indeed.

[colinr0380]

Isn't that more correctly robots transforming into bull?

[BillWatkins]

It's not Bunuel's Tristana or any of his Mexican films, or Erice's El Sur? I've never seen these films so I'm just asking.

[eerik]

It's a bull transforming into a robot. Transformers (2007). Perhaps and maybe indeed.

Transformers: Academy Award Nominated Motion Picture Trilogy by Michael Bay

[Perkins Cobb]

Moment of Truth would be impressively obscure indeed, although someone at Criterion seems to have a thing for his 60s work (Hands Over the City was similarly forgotten in the US before Becker & Co. got to it). Coincidentally, I saw this on 35mm at BAM just last week (without a Janus logo, although that probably doesn't mean anything -- all the prints in the series came from Cinecitta Luce).

It's basically a Flaherty-esque attempt to craft a fictional narrative around a great deal of documentary footage, of the bullfights and also the surrounding crowds. Rosi has a young matador, Miguel Mateo ("Miguelin"), essentially playing himself in a very basic bildungsroman story: young farmer leaves the country, shows an interest and a talent for bullfighting, runs afoul of corruption as he becomes successful. Mateo is actually pretty impressive for a non-actor but there's a bit of the inevitable Medium Cool syndrome -- the fictional episodes seem extra corny and cliched because they're juxtaposed with the verite footage. Both work on their own terms -- in particular, a complex, sensuous sequence with Linda Christian (who just died last month) also playing a version of herself, an older glamorous American expatriate (named Linda, even) who blows into a high-society party, then picks up Miguel and seduces him -- but they don't mesh.

The documentary footage reminds me of Tokyo Olympiad -- it's in Scope and rich with '60s pastels that'd look awesome on Blu -- except that it's pretty gory. Some girl sitting near me covered her eyes during most of the bull ring sequences, which make up maybe a quarter of the movie. There's also an amazing shot of a bull getting loose in a crowd and stomping the shit out of about a dozen spectators. Not for the squeamish, in other words.

I can't say this wouldn't be a worthy release, but Rosi seems to have peaked late, so if it were up to me I'd rather see his crime/corruption films of the 70s (The Mattei Affair, Lucky Luciano, Illustrious Corpses) first in the queue. Or Uomini Contro, my favorite of his work so far, except that there's already an English-friendly Italian release.

[videozor]

I'd rather see his crime/corruption films of the 70s (The Mattei Affair, Lucky Luciano, Illustrious Corpses) first in the queue. Or Uomini Contro, my favorite of his work so far, except that there's already an English-friendly Italian release.

Absolutely agree

[colinr0380]

This speculation reminds me of the piece by Alex Cox stating that a dispute over the BBC screening Salvatore Giuliano and The Mattei Affair was the reason behind the ending of the Moviedrome series (at least with Cox as presenter):

...We were still filming introductions to foreign movies. But they weren't being screened.

So Nick and I made a deal. The last year I did it [1994], we agreed that if the foreign-language films were dropped, I'd go as well: I hadn't signed on just to present American, and a handful of British, films. And - in the suitably-inappropriate context of a swimming bath in Budapest - we shot an introduction to a magnificent double bill: two films by Francesco Rosi, Salvatore Giuliano and The Mattei Affair. No one honours Rosi now, but his talent, and his influence on the Italian cinema, are huge. Salvatore Giuliano was his first worldwide success, and The Mattei Affair (the story of the founder of the Italian petroleum business, probably murdered by the CIA at the behest of US oil companies) is one of the best films of all time.

You can guess the rest. Salvatore Giuliano and The Mattei Affair weren't shown on Moviedrome. They weren't even purchased for broadcast by the BBC. The iron curtain had descended, shutting subtitles out, and so ended my talking-head telly career. I didn't miss it. But I did miss the subtitled films.