Hit and run

Muerte de un ciclista (Death of a Cyclist) 1955 Suevia, Spain (88 minutes) directed by Juan Antonio Bardem.

This is beautifully shot classic Spanish melodrama satirizes the ruling class under Franco in the 1950s, filmed in the black and white of Italian neorealism.

The basis of the story is a love triangle among Spanish society people. Juan Fernandez Soler (Alberto Closas) left Maria José (Lucia Bosé), his first love, to fight in the Spanish Civil War. While Juan was at war, Maria José, a woman of a distinguished family but limited means—and expensive tastes—married the wealthy businessman Miguel Castro (Otello Toso). In the decade after the war, Juan and Maria José de Castro have an affair.

One of the key themes is the ‘egoismo’ of the ruling class—an I’ve-got-mine self-absorption, contrasted with people who work together to serve a common good for the benefit of all.

The story opens when, driving together from an assignation at an inn on a plain outside Madrid, Maria José behind the wheel, the car hits the title cyclist in a desolate stretch of road. Fearing exposure of their affair and looking out for their own interests, the couple leaves the cyclist to die on the shoulder of the highway.

Juan is a geometry professor who owes his academic position to Jorge, his powerful but also rather pompous and ridiculous brother-in-law (Emilio Alonso)—‘un gran muchacho!’ as someone chimes in jovially—a Francoesque ‘good old boy.’ Miguel seems willfully ignorant of his wife’s affair. Curiously, Bardem’s camerawork shows Juan and Miguel gradually appear to lose distinction from Maria José’s perspective.

There also is Rafael “Rafa” Sandoval (Carlos Casaravilla), a social climber with a chip on his shoulder who has insinuated himself into this circle of society people. Rafa cynically games with people’s bad consciences to tease out their peccadilloes, trying to make them think he knows more about them than he actually does.

This tactic works with nearly devastating effect on Juan and Maria José, whose self-absorption leads them to imagine he knows about their affair and the hit-and-run.

Their apprehensions get wing when Rafa makes sure to display himself speaking intimately with Miguel out of their earshot. Later, at an overheated, foot-stomping, hand-clapping, smoke-filled, all-night flamenco session for clueless, rich, visiting Americans, we see Hitchcockian close-up shots of Rafa’s lips moving first near the wife’s, then near the husband’s ear.

The story circles karmically back to where it started, with Juan following his conscience to serve the greater good, inspired by Matilde Luque Carvajal (Bruna Corrà), a geometry student he has wronged, and Maria José in mad pursuit of her self-interest—‘egoismo’.

Director Juan Antonio Bardem is the uncle of actor Javier Bardem.