Mort d'un cycliste

This academic film is based on real events about news publicized when a cyclist was smashed by a car which hits and runs . The car is driven by an adulterous couple formed by an University professor (Alberto Closas) and a beautiful woman (Lucia Bose) married to an important man (Otello) . Later on , they're blackmailed by a swindler (Carlos Casaravilla) .

This splendid drama develops the adulterous loves between a teacher full of doubts and a high bourgeoisie lady . Fine performances from Argentinian actor Alberto Closas as the guilty professor and Lucia Bose , recently his work for Antionini , plays as a selfish Femme-fatale . Secondary acting by Carlos Casaravilla as an excellent villain , Fernando Sancho as a cop and Manuel Alexandre at a special ending intervention . Atmospheric and Neo-realist cinematography by Alfredo Fraile and adequate musical score . The motion picture was well directed By Juan Antonio Bardem . This is a 'rara avis' film of the 50s because dealing upon an adulterous love , political events and murder . Bardem had to fight the censorship which didn't admit the adultery , love scenes , neither crimes and obligated a tragic end . This one is deservedly considered one of the best movies of the Spanish cinema . Rating : Above average , essential and indispensable seeing for Spanish cinema fans .

Let me mildly dissent from the majority of my fellow IMDBers below in mildly praising this good but not great film that is not content to be simply a solid noir with a beautiful, sensually decadent femme fatale and interestingly set at the height (or depths, depending on the depth of your antifa leanings), of Franco's Spain, but instead needs to show off its intellectual cred by going all "Crime And Punishment" on us with the attendant soul searching, breast beating and philosophizing which is bearable when Dostoevsky does it, 'cause he's a friggin GENIUS, but is a bit of a bore when essayed by Juan Antonio Bardem, who is not. Give it a B minus.

This is much better than i expected, a great movie, possibly a masterpiece. On the surface, it's a typical crime drama/film noir, with a tragic event disturbing the lives of the leading characters, moral dilemmas which occur, with morally gray areas etc. But this is much deeper than a typical film noir, considering not only the movie itself but its whole historical background. I won't say much but i search for details and i found out that the director was imprisoned for this movie by dictator Franco. That fact by itself makes this movie an essential watch.

Thing is, this is so good that it can be viewed without all those details. There is a brilliant script and the characters are much more well written than other 50's film characters, these have "flesh and blood", you feel for them, you understand their troubles. The most interesting character is the protagonist. Up to a point, the whole movie was exciting but not unique. However something happened (the "incident" with his student) and from this point, movie elevated to a masterpiece, the protagonist transformed into something else and overall, the script was not a movie script anymore but great Literature.

The ending of this movie is not the original ending which was a much more powerful and daring ending. Unfortunately, the Dictatorship censored it. Yet, the ending of the movie was still good. But this 8.2/10 is a rating for the original ending.

Alberto Closas gave one of the greatest acting performances i have ever seen.

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.

Breaking the Rules

Juan Antonio Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista (Death of a Cyclist)

The Formation of a Unique Hybrid of Spanish Cinema

1955. At the height of the cold war, almost twenty years under the Franco regime, Spain, a country fiercely divided by poverty and societal division prepares with the support of the United States, to enter into the United Nations. American investors arrive in Spain for the chance to buy into the developing Spanish economy. Meanwhile on a cold winter's day, dusk is falling and the Sun's dying rays hit the highway. Enrique Arízaga cycles past and off into the outlying horizon. Almost as soon as he has gone out of sight, a screeching of brakes is heard in the distance and a black car slams to a halt around the bend; the cricket chirps. A man jumps out and rushes over. On observing the cyclist is still breathing, he calls over to the woman, inside the car. She gets out and calls back over to him. The woman beckons him again to desert the scene of the accident, leaving the cyclist to die. The car moves off again disappearing towards Madrid.

In the immediacy of its establishing sequence, Juan Antonio Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista (Death of a Cyclist) already outlines the foundations and circumstances behind the film's plot. An adulterous couple, Juan (Alberto Closas) and María José (Lucia Bosè) run down a cyclist on their way back to Madrid after a clandestine meeting in the outskirts. Rather than call for help the couple, fearful of the discovery of their adulterous relationship, flee the scene of the accident. Bardem's film focuses on the tribulations and strains on the characters' relationship from that point onwards and the lengths they go to keep their crimes of adultery and murder under cover.

Spanish director Juan Antonio Bardem (1922-2002) explored and made use of a variety of genres within his early career. In Esa pareja feliz (1951) and ¡Bienvenido Mr Marshall! (1953), both joint ventures with contemporary Luis García Berlanga, Bardem through the conventions of comedy was able to develop a structure of parody and political satire. In Cómicos (1954), Bardem was heavily influenced by the genre of Hollywood melodrama, in particular that of films such as All About Eve (1950), a convention he would continue to develop throughout later films including Calle Mayor (1956).

Throughout Muerte de un ciclista Bardem develops a compound of contrasting style and genre to represent key issues within Spanish society. Prominent themes and genres within the film include film noir and the femme fatale mould, the Hitchcock suspense thriller, Italian neo-realism and soviet montage. Bardem uses these contrasting elements directly after one another in order to create what Marsha Kinder refers to as a 'rupture' within the centrality of the plot of the Hollywood melodrama. In the same way as the unnatural cutting and contrasting imagery Bardem uses, the film is able to ideologically expose corrupt and immoral elements of the Franco regime. The focus of this essay is to explore and to investigate these various elements and analyse the way in which they come together in forming a hybrid that is unique within the history of Spanish cinema.

Through the usage of a variety of contrasting elements and genre Bardem is able to ideologically expose the corrupt elements of the Franco regime. Today Muerte de un ciclista stands as a critique of the conformist values that it ridicules and attempts to tear apart. It breaks all the rules and shows the power of cinema to revolutionise daily life. In the same way as Bardem's characters of María José who breaks the conformist gender rules of Francoist Spain, Matilde who rebels against the institutional system and Juan who goes against the corruption and falseness of his class background, so too does Muerte de un ciclista rebel both by taking a stand against the corrupt Franco regime and also by breaking the rules of mainstream conventional cinema in order to present something vitally fresh and unique in Spanish film. Alfred Hitchcock once noted that it is important to know the limits of commercial cinema. Bardem is able to successfully use a clash of genre to stretch the viewer close to an absolute limit and is subsequently able to breakdown and underline the key political issues surrounding contemporary Spanish society. In the same way as the moral courage that the character of Juan is able to attain, Bardem seeks to signify the same moral fibre that the Spanish regime strove to repress. Like the broken window imagery that Bardem puts forward towards the end of the film, so too does a hole within the melodramatic centrality serve as a central element within the film's plot in order to be clashed with and torn apart. It is through this hybrid and "rupture" of genre that Juan Antonio Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista has been able to create a quintessential feat in Spanish cinema.

Harrison Cohen

"What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?" – Lady Macbeth