The man is Juan Fernandes Soler (Alberto Closas), an assistant math professor who is simply going through the motions of his assignments and his life, except for the stolen moments with his lover, María José de Castro (Italian actress Lucia Bosé, of Michelangelo Antonioni's The Story of a Love Affair). The cool beauty married industrialist Miguel (Otello Toso) while Juan was off at war, moving into the highest social circles that wealth and power brings, but her loveless marriage hasn't stopped her from picking up and continuing their love affair, just as long as it doesn't threaten her position. We learn far more about these two through the course of the film, of course, but the impressions of the opening scene are remarkably prescient: where he is overcome with guilt that moves him to reassess the hollow values he has adopted in his unfulfilled life, she steels herself to keep silent and save her marriage and fortune at all costs. The death of this anonymous working man is a small price to pay to keep this affair a secret, even under the threat of blackmail from the obsequious Rafa (Carlos Casaravilla), an art critic and professional high society guest who plays piano at the cocktail parties of the rich and powerful.
Juan Antonio Bardem was one of the most important and influential Spanish directors to emerge after World War II. Yet he's little known in the United States and far less seen than his contemporary Carlos Saura. "He was a solid man, the sense and social conscience of our time," said screenwriter Raul del Pozo of Bardem in 2005. "And though he could appear somber and serious, he was young at heart, a real bohemian." An active member of the Communist Party, he was outspoken in his criticism of the sorry state of Spanish cinema and in 1955 at the Salamanca Congress, he published a statement that mercilessly criticized contemporary Spanish cinema as: "Politically ineffective, socially false, intellectually worthless, aesthetically nonexistent, industrially crippled." He helped lead a movement to turn the cameras on the reality of their country, taking films out of the studios and into the world, making stories that "bear witness to our time." He made such revered national Spanish classics as Calle Mayor (1956) and Vengeance (1958) while struggling against the censorship of the film industry. (As a side note, he is also the uncle of Oscar-winning actor Javier Bardem.)
Death of a Cyclist was Bardem's breakthrough film both in Spain and abroad, rousing audiences at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize. And while the bleak thriller of adultery and blackmail was reportedly affected by state censorship under Franco's oppressive shadow, the portrait of the rich and the ruling elite of Spain seen through Bardem's lens is shallow and sour at best, and thoroughly corrupt at worst. The stunning Lucia Bosé, with her high cheekbones and polished skin, looks like a woman carved out of marble and holding on to the appearance of youth as if it were her fortune. Her Maria is about as warm and expressive as stone, with a cold, calculating mind under the facade of youth and innocence. Carlos Casaravilla plays Rafa as a social parasite who despises the arrogance and hypocrisy of the rich, and surely must despise himself for playing the court jester. The toll is apparent in the his rictus of a face: he looks as much gargoyle as human, his face a mask seemingly frozen in a wide, empty crocodile smile. Even Alberto Closas' Juan is a man defined by apathy, but the experience jolts him out of his self-pitying complacency.
Imagine a Michelangelo Antonio drama of upper class disaffection by way of a film noir, all of the beautiful people and their high class homes and high living toys cast in shadow, figuratively if not literally. Shooting on location and composing scenes in deep focus, Bardem's style is most often described as realist yet the effect is closer to Orson Welles than the neo-realists. The film is never again as oppressively dreary as the overcast gloom of the opening scene, but the creamy black and white photography tends toward the somber, with Juan often found drowned in darkness and isolated from other characters.
Running a tight 88 minutes, Bardem jolts the film ahead with startling edits between scenes that both connect Juan and Maria and contrast their divergent paths. Where Maria is to be found in high society, rubbing elbows with the socially elevated and engaging in bland small talk, Juan is with the teaching students at the university or journeying into the working class neighborhood to track down the family of the dead man. The cluttered homes and ragged inhabitants of the crowded slum and the outraged students of the university, roused by idealism and solidarity to protest the unfair treatment of a fellow student, make a dramatic contrast to the empty small talk and self-important manner of Maria's chosen orbit. The clever cross cuts Juan lies awake smoking in bed and exhales into a shot of Maria brushing away a cloud of smoke, far away in her own bedroom with husband Miguel only illustrates the growing distance between them even as it connects them in their thoughts and ours. (Also note that Maria and Miguel have separate beds, which was surely a convention of Spain's conservative production code but, inadvertently or not, becomes a defining detail of their marriage.)
Criterion's disc is beautiful as expected, clean and sharp with a rich range of black and white, and is accompanied by the documentary Calle Bardem, a Spanish production from 2005 made up of interviews from Bardem's collaborators and fellow directors. The 44-minute documentary from director Albert Leal is more of a personal portrait than a career overview. There are no film clips and little discussion of his films, but the interview subjects all contemporaries of Bardem are very passionate on the subject of Bardem. They don't always agree on their assessments (he's called a didact by one fellow film professional), but they all testify to Bardem's passion and drive as an artist, as a director, and as a man. The disc also features a booklet featuring Bardem's 1955 statement "Report on the Current State of Our Cinema" and a rather scholarly essay on the film by film professor Marsha Kinder.
For more information about Death of a Cyclist, visit The Criterion Collection. To order Death of a Cyclist, go to TCM Shopping
by Sean Axmaker
