Death of a Cyclist

A car hits a cyclist on a country road. There are two people in it: María José and Juan. The man gets out, looks at the injured cyclist and sees he is breathing. Then he turns back. The two get in and drive away. The reason is simple: if they are caught it will be known they were together. María José is married to a wealthy man; Juan is an assistant at the university and owes his post to his brother in law. The next day it is in the paper. Juan cannot sleep. María José behaves as if nothing happened. Then an art critic begins hinting that something is going on between them. Juan Antonio Bardem writes and directs. Lucia Bosè, Alberto Closas and Carlos Casaravilla are in the cast. It is a Spanish and Italian co-production. The film won the FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Bardem was known for his opposition under Franco and his films had trouble with the censor. The matter it treats is not crime but class; the dead man is a worker and the narrative pushes that difference further forward than the accident. The film carries the influence of Italian neorealism but its form is more constructed; the cutting and transitions are deliberately marked. The student movement at the university is its second axis and ties to the political ground of the period. Its ending was changed because of the censor; the close in the original script was different. Its limit is register; the narrative comes close to melodrama at times. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Spanish cinema and moral crime drama. Who it is not for: it is slow, the argument plain, and the characters unsympathetic.