Death of a Cyclist

Death of a Cyclist Spanish Muerte de un ciclista is a 1955 social realist Spanish drama film directed by Juan Antonio Bardem and starring Italian actress Lucia Bos, who was dubbed into Spanish by Elsa Fbregas. It won the FIPRESCI Award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival.

Film critic Robert Koehler wrote of the directors goals when shooting film, With the economy of Tourneur and Walsh, Bardem immediately establishes in the opening frames of Death of a Cyclist not only the incident to which the title refers, but also, more crucially, that lovers Juan Alberto Closas and Maria Jos Lucia Bos are doomed. ...The RafaMaria JosMiguel interplay is sprinkled with irony, sarcasm, and suggestion, and comes to a boil with the help of social satire, revenge, paranoia, and suspicion. Its quite a soup, and Bardem has fun dipping into it. Contrary to the films reputation as a stark rebuke of Francoera hypocrisy and corruption, Death of a Cyclist is perhaps most surprising and memorable for this halfterrifying, halfcomical roundelay of three people caught in a web of misunderstanding Maria Jos mistakenly convinced that Rafa witnessed something of the bicycle accident and distrust each of them for the other.Film critic Mark Mesaros discussed the stylistic aspects of the film, writing, Death of a Cyclist is a polemical tale that borrows the grammar of the Hitchcockian murder mystery as well as the forbidden romance of film noir to achieve its ideologic ends...Beginning with the techniques that are most efficacious, its necessary to emphasize Bardems brilliant use of cuts and dissolves throughout. What will be remembered most by viewers is the way the film jump cuts effortlessly between the seemingly primary melodrama and scenes of socalled social realism. At first the cuts are employed between bourgeois and working class milieus, but later more abstract associations will be made. Its apparent that our pair of privileged sinners lie totally outside of social reality when their sportscar hits the cyclist we do not see his twisted frame, only the twisted frame of the bicycle, and the reactions of Juan and Mara Jos. Through the course of events Juan will be forced to interlope within the reality of the cyclist and his family, while Mara Jos will be furt

Source: Wikipedia