Sex and the censors: the femme fatale in Juan Antonio Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista

Abstract

The establishing montage of Juan Antonio Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista/Death of a Cyclist (1955) represents a clear challenge to the Spanish censors of the 1950s.1 It begins with a long-shot of an isolated country road. A cyclist enters the title frame and disappears over the horizon (figure 1). A car appears over the same horizon, driving erratically towards the viewer, and a cut to a medium closeup shows a couple looking back in alarm (figure 2). In a second long-shot, the man kneels over the cyclist (who is out of frame) and the woman stands behind him in a long, dark, fur coat. Her high-heeled shoes stand out against her pale stockings (figure 3). She hisses at the man to come away from the injured cyclist and the action cuts to a long-shot of a rainy, crepuscular, urban exterior. Headlights emerge from the light of the streetlamps as the same car pulls over. The woman clutches the man and says she is frightened. She drops him off, then drives away. The man stands at the side of the road, lights a cigarette and broods. A jump-cut to medium, interior closeup shows the same woman kissing a similar-looking man (figure 4).2 The focus on the kiss is held, before pulling back to reveal that this is the same woman with her husband at a party where guests are sparring verbally about adulterous spouses. The woman moves to a piano to talk to the pianist. Their dialogue is delivered in an undertone, in the question/answer form of a police interrogation, and suggests that the pianist has seen her with her lover. He tells her that he is improvising a song called Blackmail [Chantaje].3