"I like this film very much." "I wrote it while I was shooting it." "There was no screenplay." "There was merely an idea, and I put it together as I was making it." "The presence of the bullfights was so important that documenting it became the main focus of the film." "After having made "La sfida", "I magliari"," ""Salvatore Giuliano" and "Le mani sulla citta"," "I didn't have any new ideas." "But Angelo Rizzoli, the great producer and publisher, when I won the Golden Lion in Venice for "Le mani sulla citta", said, "You have to make your next film with me."" "So I said, "Fine."" "But when the time came to decide what film to make," "I didn't have anything to propose to him... that we could make right away." "It was July, when they have the San Fermin Festival in Spain, and there was a photo essay in a magazine, one of Rizzoli's, in fact," "on the San Fermin Festival." "I had been knocking around the idea of a film about a young man who wanted to burst out, to attack life and conquer it." "At that time, the young generation in Spain was asking for an opportunity," ""Pedimos una oportunidad."" "I thought, "This is perfect." "I can tell this story."" "But I didn't know anything about Spain." "I had only been there once." "I was a huge admirer of Hemingway." "I thought that "Death in the Afternoon" was a masterpiece." "So I asked myself, "If Hemingway, who didn't know anything about Spain, could go there and write a wonderful book about bullfighting and do it very competently, then why shouldn't I be able to go there and understand something about it?"" "So I told Rizzoli, "This is what I want to do."" "And he said, "What do you mean?" "All right." "Go to Spain." "Show me something, and we'll see."" "I left with two cameras and one sound guy." "I got to Spain when the San Fermin Festival was already half over, and I found the man who later became the protagonist of the film," "Miguel Mateo "Miguelin", who was the inventor of tremendismo, whose most famous practitioner and hero was El Cordobes." "Tremendismo constituted a break in the purity of the style of bullfighting." "I had talked to him, and I liked him." "I felt he was right for the part." "He still had that boyish naivete of a young man who hasn't experienced the advantages of success in life, and I felt he bore the signs of this naivete written in his face, so I had shot a few scenes with him right off the bat when I met him." "I shot and edited half an hour of bullfights." "I put some paso doble music in the background and presented it to Rizzoli, and he said, "Good job." "Go ahead." "Make the film."" "So I left to make the film." "I left with Gianni Di Venanzo." "It was the first film I made in color, with Pasqualino De Santis, who ended up completing the film, because Gianni suffered too much in watching the bullfights, the ravaging of the bulls, and so forth." "And since Fellini had asked him to work on a film with him," "I said, "Go work with Federico."" "I was a close friend of Federico, and I was glad to help him out." "But in the beginning I had had an idea... that had come to me by chance." "While I was hunting around with Gianni in various film labs, one day I saw, in a beautiful wooden box... once upon a time, the cases for lenses and cameras were made of wood..." "I saw a 300mm lens." "This was a kind of lens used exclusively to film soccer games or other athletic competitions." "I said to Gianni, "I have to bring the bull to the audience." "And since it's never been done..." "Because when the time comes for the bull to charge the torero, they always use a stunt double." "But I don't want to use a double." "I want my torero to be with the bull, and I want the audience to be with both of them."" "But it's not easy to use this lens, because it's easy to lose focus." "But he had the utmost faith in Pasqualino De Santis, who was his cameraman, so he gave Pasqualino the 300 mm lens." "And Pasqualino became..." "Pasqualino was not only a truly great director of photography, but he was also an incomparable cameraman." "He shot the most beautiful shots in my films using a handheld camera." "Pasqualino, with this 300mm, allowed me to see things that I think had never been seen before, nor since." "But the presence of the bull, with the 300mm, or the technique of the relationship, the technique through which the relationship between man and beast is analyzed, because that's the most important part of the bullfight," "the confrontation between intelligence and animal instinct, between reasoning and brute force." "That's the most important part of a bullfight." "But to understand it, you have to see it up close." "If you see it from a distance, you don't understand anything at all." "When, on the other hand, it's done without artistry, without style, it becomes vulgar butchery, and it's merely disgusting and cruel." "So I wanted my audience to understand everything about bullfighting." "I witnessed it in the streets of the towns." "I saw the amateur bullfights." "I saw the first bullfight fought by the boy, then I saw the torero being charged by the bull for the first time." "I also saw an entire season of bullfighting on the road throughout Spain, an extremely grueling tour of cities and towns, in which it's not unusual to encounter death." "They were all real bullfights..." "Sometimes one bullfight was a collage of four or five different fights." "It was a huge effort." "I shot them like we do in the movies." "We recreate the accidents." "Some accidents were real, though." "When Miguelin falls and is charged by the bull, that's all real." "It was very scary for all of us." "He slipped and fell, and the bull charged him, and I kept shooting, of course." "And the accident is in the film." "I made a film without using professional actors, apart from a brief appearance by Linda Christian." "She loved Spain very much." "She spent a lot of time there." "She was the symbol, if you will, of the American actress, and of the American who goes to live in Spain and has a relationship with this world." "There were many Americans there at that time." "They were fascinated by Spain, and also by the bullfights." "The rest of the film was made using people from the world of bullfighting." " Looking for new talent?" " I've heard good things about your boy." " Now you'll see for yourself." " We'll see, of course." "Since I knew the Spanish well, I was expecting..." "The Spanish are very proud and haughty when it comes to their culture, and they would never admit that a foreigner could claim to be a connoisseur of their culture and reality." "But when they saw my film, they said it was the best, together with Carlos Velo's film, that had ever been made." "The presence of Spanish society of the time can be felt." "It can be felt clearly." "Of course, it's not a film..." "Since Franco was in power," "I certainly couldn't make a film like "Salvatore Giuliano"." "That's obvious." "They made me wait many months for the "carton de rodaje", which is the shooting permit." "I had to wait many months in Spain before I could start shooting." "I wrote and prepared, but..." "They finally gave me the "carton de rodaje", and then when they saw the film, they gave me a few problems." "But I protested, and in the end they allowed the film to stand." "There's an almost sexual relationship, a fierce attraction... in that culture, which is still very much alive today, notwithstanding the fact that nowadays bullfighting is mostly a spectacle for tourists," "so there are times when there are certain fights... that are very painful to watch." "When bullfighting is done properly, even those who are against it can perceive... the tragedy and at the same time the "beauty" of that tragedy."