"Death of a Cyclist" (1955) Janus film on TCM Tuesday
steve
Not much info on this film on TCM or IMDB.
Searching on "Muerte de un ciclista" and translating the page, I got...
Death of a cyclist. Nationality: Spain. Script and Direction: Juan Antonio
Bardem. Argument: Luis Fernando de Igoa. Director of photography: Alfredo
Fraile. Music: Isidro B. Maiztegui, Jose Luis Piano: Garci'a of San Esteban.
Mounter: Margarita Ochoa. Producer: Manuel J. Goyanes. Scenery: Enrique
Alarcón. 35 millimeters. B/N. Normal. Duration: 88 minutes. Places of
running: Madrid. Opening: 09-09-1955, Madrid: Great Via. Spectators: 37.287.
Collection: 97.879, 20 €. Distributing company: Suevia Films, Cesáreo
González, S.A., and Trionfalcine. Date of authorization: 25 of April of
1955. Spectators: 37.287. Collection: 97.879, 20 €. Interpreters: Lucia Bosè
(Mª Jose), Alberto Closas (Juan), Dark brown Runs (Matilde), Carlos
Casaravilla (Rafa), Otello Toso (Miguel), Alicia Romay (sister of Juan),
Julia Expensive Delgado (Mother of Juan), Manuel Alexandre (Cycling),
Fernando Sancho (Guard), Matilde Muñoz Sampedro, Mercedes Albert, Jose
Sepúlveda, Jose Prada, Jacinth San Emeterio, Manuel Arbó, Emilio Alonso,
Thorny Daisy, English Rufino, Antonio Casas, Manuel Guitián, Elisa Méndez,
Jose Maria Rodriguez, Carmen Castellanos, Jose Maria Sparrowhawk, Jose
Navarro, Gracita Montes, Manuel Rojas.
And this translated semi-gibberish (which is fun, actually).
Death of a cyclist, who, in spite of his will to draw for the pro-Franco
censorship, received the qualification of “seriously dangerous”, was
released outside aid in Cannes, where it obtained the prize of the Critical
International of the Festival.
The apparent argumental simplicity of has been filming for thinking that its
exhibition could be free of difficulties. Nevertheless, the symbolism that
locks up, the distrust of the authorities woke up, and but for the
collaboration of the producer Manuel Goyanes, who involved several companies
to undertake this project, hardly would have been rolled this films. Bardem
already had Alberto Closas, and the Italian producer Trionfalcine
contributed, on the other hand, to Lucia Bosè.
Most of the running passed in the Chamartín studies, Madrid and its
environs.
Finalized the festival of Cannes, Bardem participated in the Cinematographic
National Conversations of Salamanca, during the course of which, it
struggled on the structural situation of the Spanish cinema. Juan Antonio
Bardem and Basilio Martin Patiño jointly summarized the conclusions of that
congress emphasizing that “when the cinema of all the countries concentrates
its interest in the problems that the reality raises every day, thus serving
to an essential mission of testimony, the Spanish cinema continues
cultivating topical well-known. The problem of the Spanish cinema is that
she is not that witness whom our time it demands to all human creation”.
Bardem was still more far in its valuation of so significant encounter when
it declared that “the Spanish cinema is politically ineffective, false,
intellectually very small, null and socially aesthetically industrially
rickety”.
It is not necessary to forget that the pro-Franco cinema, although
qualitatively was inferior to other national cinematographies, it knew a
clearly propagandistic purpose, and the few that avoided deliberately and
slyly the censorship, happened to the posterity like exceptional witnesses
of their time that, not only resisted to assume like own the principles of
the regime, but that, in addition, put it in prohibition, showing their dark
side simply.
Maria Jose, a young lady of the Madrilenian bourgeoisie, and their lover
Juan, a university professor, runs over accidentally, to a cyclist. They
stop to verify its state. Juan approaches the dying, but, interbare by her,
he stops and he backs down. Immediately afterwards, both raise the car, and
flee suddenly tormented by the remorse, that it will persecute to them
frequently until they discover that nobody knows nothing of the happened
thing.
She is besieged by a critic of art (Rafa), and he, by her own conscience.
Maria Jose, dominated by the mistrust before the annoying hints of Rafa,
that seems, in his opinion, to know the happened thing, fears for the
integrity of her social reputation. Juan, on the other hand, ofuscado by a
incipiente feeling of fault, distraídamente carries out his occupations,
although eyebrow in his effort daily not to conserve the calm, and to assume
its tasks with one pretends normality. Nevertheless, an act of professional
negligence leads to him the disrepute. During one of her classes, a student
leaves to the slate to be put under an examination. During the course of the
exhibition, the voice of the student feels like suffocating Juan to him, and
it strangles the thought to him, of such way, that it ends up prorrumpiendo
a shout, conminando it to leave to his site. Soon after, Juan suspends the
examination to him, and as a result of it, he must assume the decisions of
his superior ones and to confront the protests of the students.
Later, not without before, to warn Maria Jose, decides to leave everything,
and to give itself to the police. She resigns, nevertheless, to sacrifice
her social position, and to avoid it, deliberately runs over Juan, in the
same highway where outside run over the cyclist. To her, without knowing it,
she waits him the same fatality that to this one. While she returns to his
house, a second cyclist crosses itself to him, and to avoid it, she gives an
abrupt turn, she hurries by a bridge, and she dies. The cyclist nondoubt in
giving warning of the accident, unlike which they did at a first moment.
According to it points professor Jose Mª Caparrós, in “Death of a cyclist,
(...) are possible to be appreciated the influence peddling and the
situation of the working class in that stage of postwar period, as well as
the fariseísmo of certain society, or the first coborn ones of student
rebellion, in addition to trasfondo Spanish politician and the crisis of
some intellectuals - it was even identified to Bardem with the art critic
that incorporates Carlos Casaravilla-”. (…/…)
“The death of Juan by Maria Jose acquires importance and probability, as
soon as beyond the social thing it is gone to he himself scope acting
politically: it is a social class defending at all costs his privileges
(...). Death of a cyclist is, therefore, the critical description of a
country that lives a period on social confusion, in which the misery and the
luxury do not find a midpoint of confluence”.
On the other hand, according to the city-planning model of the time, to each
district a social category was attributed to him almost exclusive, seemed as
if the field and the city occupied he himself space, but without getting to
agree. The separation between rich poor men and very clear era, and each
segment of the population assumed its own roll by system. While that
situation of hipocresía buried persisted, everything passed with the
indolencia that the regime imposed, but was some who, like Juan, thought
that it was necessary to introduce irrevocable changes. In fact, the wage
vindications, that caused sectorial strikes of the spring of 1956, announced
already, an alteration of the course of the regime, at that time, timid, but
still gradual. Next to the working agitation, one not less important
university agitation motivated by the measures applied by Minister of
Education Joaquin untied Ruiz Giménez (chosen like so, in 1951), destined to
maintain an iron social control in the university scope, which to many felt
like a form to them of profanación of the principles on which the University
is sustained, among others, the freedom of thought and action.
The consecration to a social layer whatever the cost, as it represents Maria
Jose, is opposed to the confusion state that seizes of Juan who, although it
acts according to a system of values that assumes almost with the own
stoicism of that obeys pleasingly to its benefactor; it glimpses a new
horizon, the coming of a society model that is beginning to develop. On the
other hand, Matilde represents a generation of disconformes young people
with a system of values prematurely, that no longer satisfies its
expectations.
The film reproduces, among other things, the identificativos characteristics
of three different stereotypes:
Maria Jose, like heiress of a social category, that eliminates any obstacle
that it prevents to hold his position him.
Juan, as the beneficiary of a form of enquistado nepotism.
Matilde, that represents the relief of a generation that will carry out the
later changes.
Death of a cyclist, is then, not only an accident, but the announcement of a
change that can cause any fortuitous event.
--
"The accused will now make a bogus statement."
James Joyce