Welcome, Mr Marshall and Death of a Cyclist: Critical Social Portrait of Franco’s Regime

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An Essay for Contemporary Spanish Culture and Society through Film Class
Luis Garcia Berlanga’s comedy film Welcome Mr. Marshall (1953) is about Villar del Río, a small Spanish town eagerly preparing for the arrival of American diplomats to save Spain from post-Civil War economic hardships. Juan Antonio’s Death of a Cyclist (1955) is a social realist Spanish drama that centers on secret lovers: Maria Jose, a wealthy housewife and a University Professor, Juan, who abandons a cyclist after accidentally striking and killing him while driving Maria home.
Although the films examine opposite ends of the class spectrum, they propose a similar gender representation model: traditional subservient femininity. Welcome, Mr. Marshall repeatedly expresses distinct female and male roles: - Women perform domestic chores, while men hang out smoking. A similar case is observed in Death of a Cyclist, where women like Dona Matilde and Dona Raquel collect clothing donations for poor children. 
Welcome, Mr. Marshall also portrays women as submissive to men in a rural setting. These women assume societal roles that give men entertainment and pleasure. The portrayal affects the representation of women and gender relations in the sense that women are seen as having little significance in the rural setting compared to men. In contrast, Death of a Cyclist, set in an urban area, depicts women as independent. The film has two female protagonists: - Maria Jose, a high-class woman and Matilde, a Mathematics student. These female characters portray gender roles that differ from the ones in Welcome, Mr. Marshall. Maria Jose is viewed as a self-absorbed person...