|
A gray, overcast day on a lonely country highway. A solitary
cyclist peddles past the camera and out of view behind a hill
in the road. A car abruptly swerves in to view from the
opposite direction and screeches to a halt. A cool, elegant
young woman with the bearing of a fashion model is in the
driver's seat, implacable and controlled while the startled
and anxious man in the passenger seat runs back from where
they came. We heard no collision and see no body, but the
wheel of the upturned bicycle slow spins in the foreground.
The conclusion is unmistakable. The man, tentatively
approaching the wreck, exclaims that the victim is still
alive. The woman, hanging back and keeping her distance,
tells him that they must leave. The man hesitates but the
woman is in the driver's seat here, in every meaning of the
term. She never looks back as she implacably drives them away
but his unsettled complicity in the hit and run is evident in
the way he stares out the back window.
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
|
TCM UK
| 
TCM Spain
| 
TCM France
| TCM Latin America
| TCM Asia
| TCM Germany
TCM.com is part of the Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network.
