Boetticher was a bullfighter before he became a filmmaker-an apprentice matador in Mexico before Rouben Mamoulian hired him as a technical advisor on Blood and Sand (1941). In 1951 Boetticher was finally able to execute a long-cherished personal project: the adaptation of his formative bullfighting experience into a feature film. Produced for Republic Pictures by Boetticher ally John Wayne, it was a modest action melodrama about a young American who learns the art of bullfighting from a distinguished Mexican matador. Robert Stack stars as the director's surrogate, an American outsider beguiled by the spectacle in the Mexican bullring. Stack craves first-hand knowledge, the secrets of technique, the truth of experience, and the film answers with bullfight scenes rendered in documentary detail, shot with energy and verve and the exhilaration of representing a rarefied milieu with accuracy. The film's real dramas are staged in the ring-not primal conflicts of man versus beast, but rather highly ritualized tests of masculinity.-Jesse ZigelsteinBoetticher admirer John Ford supervised the edit, cutting, however, some of Boetticher's most beloved material. UCLA's director's cut has restored over forty minutes of footage missing from the original release version. Preservation funded by the AFI/NEA Film Preservation Grants Program.