Following his Gaumont western films, directed by Jean Durand, Hammon returned to Eclipse to make several Arizona Bill films, perhaps directed by Gaston Roudès. Face au taureau seems to be the only title that survives, and it is incomplete. Like Hamman’s other westerns, the film was shot on location in the Camargue, with shots of horsemen herding cattle through a flat, scrubby landscape. Unfortunately, the first scenes that set up the story are missing, and there are several gaps in the footage that remains.
Arizona Bill has to confront a villain named Arbaud, who wants to possess the farm of a widow, Mrs. Raynaud. Threatening her without effect, the scoundrel poisons the source of the farm’s water; but Bill discovers the plot once his horse drinks the water and collapses. Furious, Arbaud lets loose “Lou Cande,” a savage bull that attacks the farm’s proprietress as she flees up a barn ladder. Bill comes to the rescue (in silhouette through a barn doorway) and succeeds in wrestling the beast to the ground; Arbaud meets his just end, trampled to death by a herd of bulls.
In the surviving footage, Hamman gets to demonstrate his skill and courage, leaping onto one of a herd of running horses and then singlehandedly taking a bull down by grabbing its horns and twisting its neck toward the ground (a rodeo stunt). For the climactic scene the camera is set at a high angle to frame both the widow clinging to the ladder and Hamman struggling with the bull. Later the camera again is set at a slightly high angle to catch the herd of bulls pounding over Arnaud’s body (in an old substitution trick).

Richard Abel