Dreadfully Boring

Crappy film

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is a 1900 movie that runs for 45 seconds roughly and shows us basically the events in an arena where several people go up against a bull, one of them even on a horse. I personally find bullfighting a despicable activity, so I cannot appreciate this film really. From a filmmaker's perspective, I would not call it a bad effort, but there were already moving cameras a couple years ago, so it's a bit disappointing to see this static camera still in 1900, even if it is still 115 years ago. Of course, the film is silent and black-and-white as always these days. I cannot say I recommend this movie. Even if you don't mind bullfighting, there is nothing really memorable about it in my opinion.

While this film is technically competent for its time the subject matter, it has to be said, is one not worthy of the celluloid wasted upon it. The pomp and glamour of the bullfight is mere gaudy dressing to disguise the morally repugnant cowardice of its practitioners and, as another reviewer has already noted, shorn of its glamorous trappings the ritual is exposed for what it is. Gaily uniformed men on horses taunt a bull already weakened for the kill. Dazed and bewildered, its blood glistening on its flanks, the helpless creature lunges blindly at its tormentors. The brave taunter of the bull is safe though; it is the horse on which he is mounted that bears the brunt of the doomed bull's horns...

The photography - in particular, the composition - in this early short feature is very good, but the choice of material is possibly less so. It's one of the earlier examples of the many movies that have combined technical skill with subject matter that some viewers will find uncomfortable.The movie shows about a minute or so of footage from a bullfight, and in technical terms, it is quite successful. The footage survives in surprisingly good condition, and it films the events from what seems to have been a carefully chosen vantage point. You can clearly see a portion of the crowd in the foreground, then the main action, and then, in the background, a pretty clear view of the crowd on the other side of the arena.While formal development of techniques like deep focus photography may have been a much later innovation, this is one of a number of very early films that show that even very early film-makers had the idea, without necessarily using a specific term for it, of trying to take a clear picture of both a foreground and a distant background.In its content, the movie covers a popular but somewhat inhumane activity, which lessens its entertainment value except for those who would not be bothered by it. (And indeed, some viewers would find nothing objectionable about it at all.) The footage does not, in fact, contain any particularly brutal sights, but the nature of the material being filmed would diminish for some viewers the satisfaction that otherwise could be had from the good quality technical aspects of the movie.

Inadvertently - in that I presume this film was shot for its exotic subject matter - 'Spanish Bullfight' completely deglamorises the noble art of the corrida. Filmed in stark black and white, shorn of the gaudy, brightly-coloured, gilt-edged uniforms; the sun-drenched Mediterranean arena; the vociferous, passionate crowd; the kind of godlike vantage-point that allows one to pontificate metaphysically; the whole thing is exposed as a shambolic sham.Hemingway would not have found much nobility or meaning here - all we get are a group of young cowards terrorising a poor animal, like the scorpion-baiting kids before the opening slaughter of 'The Wild Bunch'. Here is documentary doing what it so rarely does, exposing the unpalatable truth behind the glittering surface. The sight of the poor bewildered beast, alone in the frame for excruciating seconds, before what we know will be the next attack, is agonising. Luckily, he manages to lunge a few times at the thugs.