Eight years in the making, Boetticher’s portrait of his longtime friend, the famous bullfighter Carlos Arruza, was a labor of love that the renowned director of westerns pursued despite contending with illnesses, bankruptcy, jail time, and lucrative offers from Hollywood. The result is an astonishing work of poetry, immediacy, and violence that fearlessly wrestles with the filmmaker’s own ambivalence about the titular matador’s triumphs prior to his death by automobile accident at the age of 46.
The life of the famed Mexican bullfighter Luis Procuna, from his boyhood through his training and the triumphs that followed as Procuna rose to the peak of his profession. Written by Jim Beaver
The film evokes all the aspects of bullfighting - its history, the bulls, the toreros, the arena, the audience - and involves numerous matadors from the era.