Death of a Cyclist – Editing techniques

Death of a Cyclist struck me for its creative and exhaustive use of editing tricks, here’s an opportunity to make a small inventory of these techniques for shot and scene transitions.

I don’t know the exact terms and I left the subtitles to make them self explanatory, so I’ll edit that later if I find better ones.

(attn: spoilers below)

  1. Audio bridge + smash cut ? The woman’s in the party is Maria, she’s married to a business man, and below is Juan, her lover, a university teacher. There’s a clear class divide carried by the film, it’s most likely the main thematic spine.

2. Audio bridge, works like a punchline here.

3. A “cut on action” that empathizes separation even more.

4. A “disrupted match-cut”. Per the Cinematic Storytelling book by J.V. Sijll : “two matched images are separated by a single shot”, story-wise it’s a visual contrast that supports the social commentary and class divison.

5. Another “cut on action” to another scene.