Der Tod eines Radfahrers

Juan Antonio Bardem was a pioneer in the not too thriving film industry in Franco's Spain and "Death of a cyclist" is his most well known picture. Today Spanish directors as Pedro Almodovar and Alejandro Amenabar are known worldwide, as is the nephew of Juan Antonio, the famous actor Javier Bardem.

The context of the film is an accident in which a car collides with a bycicle. Inside the car there are a man and a woman having an extramarital relationship. To keep their relationship secret, they don't call for help and the cyclist dies. A little while later someone tries to blackmail them, because "he knows something".

From that moment on the film takes on a guilt and penitence character. The central theme of the film is that the penitence that the man experiences is totally different from the penitence of the woman.

The man feels the guilt inside. The question if the widow of the death cyclist is left behind well cared for torments him and he tries to gather information about this question.

For the woman her quilt is more of an external nature. She sees her guilt as a threat to her luxury life. A life in which her older husband brings in money and her younger lover brings in pleasure. As long as the knowledge of the accident is limited to herself the threat shall not materialize. She goes at great length to find out what the blackmailer exactly knows. Knows he only about her extramarital relationship or also about the traffic accident?

In the opening scene we see the two lovers together. In the rest of the film we see them mostly apart. Through smart editing the director stresses the different ways the two main characters are handling their common guilt.