The protagonist is Miguel Romero, a young provincial man played by real-life 26-year-old torero Miguel Mateo, known affectionately to his fans as “Miguelín.” Seeking to escape the drudgeries of poor rural life (symbolized by a shot of his father making endless loops in a horse-drawn tiller), he takes up an interest in bullfighting, eventually catching the attention of Don José (José Gomez Sevillano), an agent who helps shape him into a rising star (with plenty coming off the top for him). Miguel is handsome, athletic, and graceful in the arena, and soon he is a hot commodity, fighting all over Spain and drawing crowds that cheer for his unique style that blends classical bullfighting techniques with a modern spin. Miguel is fearless in the arena (his first big break comes when he steps in for a more favored torero who chickens out at the last minute), but he is also steadfast in his purpose, which is not to be a celebrity, but rather to make enough money that he can retire young. He is surrounded by temptation, particularly women who want to consume him, much like the audiences that pack into the arenas to watch him on display.

The rise-and-fall arc of Miguel’s tragedy is familiar, although Rosi gives it a new dimension via his neorealist approach that mixes the fictional story with enough real-life footage to give The Moment of Truth a constant documentary vibe. The film opens with nearly 10 minutes of footage depicting the annual running of the bulls in a small Italian village following an ornate religious parade that embodies all that was odious about the Catholic Church’s collusion with General Franco during the dictator’s reign. That is the extent of the film’s involvement with larger political concerns, though, as Rosi focuses his attention on the world of bullfighting.

Characterized as an art by its admirers and a brutal bloodsport by its detractors, bullfighting is the film’s true subject, and if Miguel holds any interest it is only as one particularly shining element of an elaborate business enterprise that makes money by feeding the spectators’ bloodlust in the name of cultural heritage. Having personally attended a bullfight in Guadalajara, Mexico, some years ago, I can attest to its brutality and the power with which Rosi captures its horrific energy on film. Because the film is only partially interested in Miguel’s story, Rosi can dedicate significant chunks of screen time to a documentary-like portrayal of how bullfights unfold. With the ’Scope aspect ratio taking in the enormity of the arena and the crowds and the Technicolor ensuring the vividness of the copious amounts of spilt blood, the film catalogs with unblinking precision the rigid performance of bullfighting, from the first emergence of the bull into the area, to its weakening by being constantly stabbed between the shoulder blades by a horse-mounted matador with a lance, to the ritualistic spearing of the bull by the brightly dressed torero with hooked barbs that leads to the more familiar red muleta and the animal’s eventual demise via a sword in the base of its skull.

While there is undeniable artistry in the torero’s dance-like movements (which Rosi often captures in close-up using zoom lenses that put us right in the action), it is hard to escape the feeling that bullfighting is little more than a particularly cruel means of demonstrating that intellectual and moral superiority do not necessarily go hand in hand. The mixture of lavish display and wanton cruelty is almost absurd, which plays into Rosi’s overarching view of the nature of power and the manner in which it draws everyone and everything into its manipulative vacuum. While commendable on a political level, the film as a whole never quite works simply because it feels so divided. Its documentary footage is so gruesomely absorbing that we lose track of Miguel, and when the camera finds him again, we are reminded that he is essentially a nonentity defined only by the generalities of his peasant background and his economic aspirations. Thus, we feel very little when he returns to his village as a superstar or when he is seduced by an American socialite (Linda Christian, essentially playing herself). Outside the arena the film has an emotional numbness, so that by the time Rosi draws the story its tragic conclusion, it feels more clichéd than devastating—the obvious and only way the story could end.

Copyright ©2011 James Kendrick

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