Rouben Mamoulian’s Blood and Sand most closely resembles The Adventures of Robin Hood’s style of different rules for the discrete phases of the film and assertive color design.
The defining rule for the beginning of Blood and Sand is restraint: setting Juan Gallardo apart from his world through color. The first shot tracks from a poster of a matador, to a wall-mounted bull’s head, finally resting on a wide-awake Juan. This pithy sequence tells the audience everything about Juan’s vision of himself. The brightest light is on the poster: Juan’s aspiration. The bull is pure black and casts a shadow looming over the bed. Juan wears a maroon shirt, standing out in a backdrop of deep blues. Though we only saw the bull briefly, this shot establishes …show more content…
This section is dictated by technicolor director for Robin Hood and Blood and Sand Natalie Kalmus’ “Law of Emphasis”: The most important character should wear the warmest or brightest color. On the train home, Juan sits alone on the bench, his face obscured by a newspaper. As he pulls the newspaper down to reveal his face, he simultaneously reveals the bright red cape hanging behind him. Juan is not only the most important character, but he also has the power and confidence to define his setting. He also exhibits his control over other characters’ palettes, a more extreme manifestation of the revelation of color present in P.T. Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love. Juan’s mother is the only townsperson welcoming him home at the station. Juan, in a red suit, runs over and reveals her purple blouse by taking off his mother’s shawl, before replacing it with the new shawl he bought in Madrid. Juan has total, almost domineering control over the appearance of the characters around him. His confidence anticipates his rise in success, and the audience understands that he is destined for stardom. In this phase of the film, this destiny is represented through the continuous color emphasis on
The defining rule for the beginning of Blood and Sand is restraint: setting Juan Gallardo apart from his world through color. The first shot tracks from a poster of a matador, to a wall-mounted bull’s head, finally resting on a wide-awake Juan. This pithy sequence tells the audience everything about Juan’s vision of himself. The brightest light is on the poster: Juan’s aspiration. The bull is pure black and casts a shadow looming over the bed. Juan wears a maroon shirt, standing out in a backdrop of deep blues. Though we only saw the bull briefly, this shot establishes …show more content…
This section is dictated by technicolor director for Robin Hood and Blood and Sand Natalie Kalmus’ “Law of Emphasis”: The most important character should wear the warmest or brightest color. On the train home, Juan sits alone on the bench, his face obscured by a newspaper. As he pulls the newspaper down to reveal his face, he simultaneously reveals the bright red cape hanging behind him. Juan is not only the most important character, but he also has the power and confidence to define his setting. He also exhibits his control over other characters’ palettes, a more extreme manifestation of the revelation of color present in P.T. Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love. Juan’s mother is the only townsperson welcoming him home at the station. Juan, in a red suit, runs over and reveals her purple blouse by taking off his mother’s shawl, before replacing it with the new shawl he bought in Madrid. Juan has total, almost domineering control over the appearance of the characters around him. His confidence anticipates his rise in success, and the audience understands that he is destined for stardom. In this phase of the film, this destiny is represented through the continuous color emphasis on