A Morte de um Ciclista

A mix of noir psychological thriller and political examination of class and privilege in Franco's Spain, this reminded me as much as anything of Antonioni's 'Story of a Love Affair', although I liked this even more. For me there were more thematic and emotional levels explored in more interesting ways.

The film is beautifully made with a striking use of transitions to keep us off base, and an alternating mix of neo-realist, and slick Hitchcockian camera work that evokes the separation of class in society.

The story is simple. A pair of upper-class lovers accidentally hit a cyclist on the highway, and leave him to die, for fear of being discovered as lovers and losing all they have in society and with each other.

The rest of the film is about both the moral questions of responsibility and ego versus a sense of communal responsibility, and the gut wracking tension as to whether the two will be discovered.

I was occasionally bothered by the heavy handedness of some of the film. Sometimes it was just a too on-the-nose politically ironic line, but particularly an important sub-plot about a student the male half of our anti-hero couple, has treated unfairly. This sub-plot, while beautifully shot and well acted, feels like it exists only to make political and thematic points, and pulled me out of identifying with the film on a human level. Likewise, a couple of crucial character twists, while interesting, feel forced or sudden -- more there to make a point then to honestly continue the narrative.

But these are small flaws compared to the film's great strengths, and it is very much worth seeing.

This and his next film 'Calle Mayor' established Juan Antonio Bardem as one of the world's leading filmmakers although as a Communist his far from complimentary view of those who had enriched themselves under Franco's regime was hardly likely to endear him to the authorities. He was in fact arrested whilst filming 'Calle Mayor' and was still in prison when 'Muerte de un Ciclista' won the International Film Critics' Award at Cannes.

Thematically it is inspired by Tolstoy's 'Resurrection' and filmically shows the influence of Antonioni's 'Cronaca di un amore'. Indeed Francois Truffaut, never one to mince his words, accused Bardem of plagiarism. Granted, there are what one critic has referred to as 'reinventions of Antonioni settings' but for this viewer at any rate these would probably not have occurred to me had they not been pointed out and certainly did not lessen my appreciation of Bardem's film.

The main link of course is the presence in both films of the charismatic Lucia Bosé, playing on both occasions an adulterous wife. Her lover here is well played by Alberto Closas but his character's crisis of conscience and moralisings somehow lack conviction. As the idealistic Matilde the lovely Bruna Corra provides a counterpoint to the self-obsessed Maria of Bosé. It is however the Uruguayan character actor Carlos Casaravilla who registers most strongly as a 'camp' art critic whose bitterness conceals a painful loneliness.

What strikes one most about the film is its technical brilliance. Atmospherically shot by Alfredo Fraile, the framing, compositions and use of close-ups are excellent and with the assistance of Margarita Orchoa, the only editor with whom Bardem worked until her death in the mid-sixties, there is an extremely effective use of cross-cutting and abrupt jump cuts. There is alas a brief shot of the cameraman's hand in the back of Maria's car and one is surprised that the director allowed it to remain.

He was obliged to cut the film from 91 to 88 minutes and one is intrigued as to what those three minutes contained. Needless to say censorship of the time required Maria to be punished for her crime and the ending, albeit highly melodramatic, is well handled and supremely ironic.

Despite being derivative in parts, this remains a landmark in post Civil War Spanish cinema and it is to be lamented that much of this courageous artiste's subsequent work was affected by government control.

A 1955 Spanish language film (from Spain) which finds a well to do couple (Albert Closas & Lucia Bose) hitting a bicyclist on the road one night & decide to flee from the scene of the crime. Once back in their respective corners (Bose is married & stepping out w/Closas) they both descend into their own moral quandaries w/Closas guilt ridden (heading to the victim's neighborhood to find out about the man) while Bose is blasé about the whole thing even though a hanger-on in her social circle insinuates he knows what happened. Closas is inconsolable however even suggesting towards the film's end to turn themselves over to the authorities which doesn't end well for him. Getting much mileage from guilt, director Juan Antonio Bardem (who turns out to be an uncle to Oscar winner Javier Bardem) milks the moody lighting for all its worth w/winning performances across the board especially Bose who is perfect as the femme fatale.

Juan Antonio Bardem was a pioneer in the not too thriving film industry in Franco's Spain and "Death of a cyclist" is his most well known picture. Today Spanish directors as Pedro Almodovar and Alejandro Amenabar are known worldwide, as is the nephew of Juan Antonio, the famous actor Javier Bardem.

The context of the film is an accident in which a car collides with a bycicle. Inside the car there are a man and a woman having an extramarital relationship. To keep their relationship secret, they don't call for help and the cyclist dies. A little while later someone tries to blackmail them, because "he knows something".

From that moment on the film takes on a guilt and penitence character. The central theme of the film is that the penitence that the man experiences is totally different from the penitence of the woman.

The man feels the guilt inside. The question if the widow of the death cyclist is left behind well cared for torments him and he tries to gather information about this question.

For the woman her quilt is more of an external nature. She sees her guilt as a threat to her luxury life. A life in which her older husband brings in money and her younger lover brings in pleasure. As long as the knowledge of the accident is limited to herself the threat shall not materialize. She goes at great length to find out what the blackmailer exactly knows. Knows he only about her extramarital relationship or also about the traffic accident?

In the opening scene we see the two lovers together. In the rest of the film we see them mostly apart. Through smart editing the director stresses the different ways the two main characters are handling their common guilt.

It's a great premise, and director Juan Antonio Bardem plunges us immediately into the drama of a pair of lovers who accidentally hit a bicyclist on a deserted road and then just leave him to die. As the story unfolds, we find out more these people and the setting itself. The man (Alberto Closas) is a math professor who got his job through his powerful brother-in-law, and the woman (Lucia Bosè) has been his lover since before the Spanish Civil War, but who left him while he was off fighting it in order to marry into wealth and a higher social standing. Both are thus privileged, but somewhat morally compromised even before the accident. By contrast, the victim is from a much more humble background, which we see when the professor tries to visit his widow. Still later, we find that the place where the accident occurred, on a road through a barren landscape, was also where the professor had been fighting in the war, and there is clearly meaning in that fact. (As an aside, the landscape may remind you of the 1973 Spanish film 'The Spirit of the Beehive', and there is something eerie and sad about these films made under authoritarian rule that seem to show the devastation of the spirit via this type of scenery.)

The pair are threatened when a pianist/art critic (Carlos Casaravilla) begins making oblique comments hinting that he knows something, and then later when the pair disagree about whether to admit what they've done or not. This tension is strong in the beginning, but falters a bit with an unnecessary subplot involving one of the professor's students, as well as in becoming a bit too much of a morality tale. It's also pretty clear what the art critic knows, but the pretense for ambiguity is carried on a little too long, and this interesting subplot and character aren't taken advantage of in better ways. It picks up towards the end though, with Bosè delivering some great moments through the coolness of her eyes, and a dramatic finish.

The film makes social points in showing how far the wealthy will go to obtain or maintain their position, and you can see in it political commentary too. After the war, society is stratified in unfair ways, with a big gap between the powerful and the poor, and indeed, the powerful can sometimes believe they are above the law. The scene of the crime being near a battlefield seems to mean that this horrifying but relatively small act is a microcosm of much larger crimes having been committed against Spain, or something along those lines. Seen from that perspective, perhaps the ending is less the natural conclusion of a morality tale, and more a subversive message, which was interesting to think about. It's when I consider these aspects and the courage it took for Bardem to make films like this under Franco that I liked 'Death of a Cyclist' best. As just a drama alone, it's probably just average, but it could be rated higher because of this context.