User Reviews

This academic film is based on real events about news publicized when a cyclist was smashed by a car which hits and runs . The car is driven by an adulterous couple formed by an University professor (Alberto Closas) and a beautiful woman (Lucia Bose) married to an important man (Otello) . Later on , they're blackmailed by a swindler (Carlos Casaravilla) .

This splendid drama develops the adulterous loves between a teacher full of doubts and a high bourgeoisie lady . Fine performances from Argentinian actor Alberto Closas as the guilty professor and Lucia Bose , recently his work for Antionini , plays as a selfish Femme-fatale . Secondary acting by Carlos Casaravilla as an excellent villain , Fernando Sancho as a cop and Manuel Alexandre at a special ending intervention . Atmospheric and Neo-realist cinematography by Alfredo Fraile and adequate musical score . The motion picture was well directed By Juan Antonio Bardem . This is a 'rara avis' film of the 50s because dealing upon an adulterous love , political events and murder . Bardem had to fight the censorship which didn't admit the adultery , love scenes , neither crimes and obligated a tragic end . This one is deservedly considered one of the best movies of the Spanish cinema . Rating : Above average , essential and indispensable seeing for Spanish cinema fans .

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.

A mix of noir psychological thriller and political examination of class and privilege in Franco's Spain, this reminded me as much as anything of Antonioni's 'Story of a Love Affair', although I liked this even more. For me there were more thematic and emotional levels explored in more interesting ways.

The film is beautifully made with a striking use of transitions to keep us off base, and an alternating mix of neo-realist, and slick Hitchcockian camera work that evokes the separation of class in society.

The story is simple. A pair of upper-class lovers accidentally hit a cyclist on the highway, and leave him to die, for fear of being discovered as lovers and losing all they have in society and with each other.

The rest of the film is about both the moral questions of responsibility and ego versus a sense of communal responsibility, and the gut wracking tension as to whether the two will be discovered.

I was occasionally bothered by the heavy handedness of some of the film. Sometimes it was just a too on-the-nose politically ironic line, but particularly an important sub-plot about a student the male half of our anti-hero couple, has treated unfairly. This sub-plot, while beautifully shot and well acted, feels like it exists only to make political and thematic points, and pulled me out of identifying with the film on a human level. Likewise, a couple of crucial character twists, while interesting, feel forced or sudden -- more there to make a point then to honestly continue the narrative.

But these are small flaws compared to the film's great strengths, and it is very much worth seeing.

on the Franco dictatorship, the class system of Spain in that era, and how people are in their own microcosm, and live in their own world until it is shattered by crime.

Maria Jose Castro (portrayed by the lovely Lucia Bose) is married to wealthy Miguel Castro (Otello Toso). It is a marriage of convenience, she has everything she wants materially, but nothing of love or emotion left in the marriage. She spends her days in a circle of bored friends, attending lunches, but wishing to be with her lover Juan Fernandez Soler (Alberto Closas).

The cinematography here is intriguing and sinister. Stark landscapes, cold winter, yet the people involved are comfortable and corrupt, drinking and dining.

Of course the character of Rafa Sandoval (played by Carlos Casaravilla) is excellent and elemental to a pivotal part of the story. He has seen the couple in their car on the highway, but just how much he has seen he will not divulge to Maria Jose. It is an ongoing teaser that we watch in suspense...we are not certain what each character will do.

Juan Fernandez, a professor of mathematics is merely existing, he resents his job which was acquired through his in-laws. He is tired of keeping up appearances.

There is a twist and you should watch this film more than once for the subtle nuances and character actors who play a part in the mood.

It begins with the death of a cyclist, but evolves into study of society, politics, and how people act out to endure their mortality, or the prison of their mortality. In the end it is their choice. 10/10.

Breaking the Rules

Juan Antonio Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista (Death of a Cyclist)

The Formation of a Unique Hybrid of Spanish Cinema

1955. At the height of the cold war, almost twenty years under the Franco regime, Spain, a country fiercely divided by poverty and societal division prepares with the support of the United States, to enter into the United Nations. American investors arrive in Spain for the chance to buy into the developing Spanish economy. Meanwhile on a cold winter's day, dusk is falling and the Sun's dying rays hit the highway. Enrique Arízaga cycles past and off into the outlying horizon. Almost as soon as he has gone out of sight, a screeching of brakes is heard in the distance and a black car slams to a halt around the bend; the cricket chirps. A man jumps out and rushes over. On observing the cyclist is still breathing, he calls over to the woman, inside the car. She gets out and calls back over to him. The woman beckons him again to desert the scene of the accident, leaving the cyclist to die. The car moves off again disappearing towards Madrid.

In the immediacy of its establishing sequence, Juan Antonio Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista (Death of a Cyclist) already outlines the foundations and circumstances behind the film's plot. An adulterous couple, Juan (Alberto Closas) and María José (Lucia Bosè) run down a cyclist on their way back to Madrid after a clandestine meeting in the outskirts. Rather than call for help the couple, fearful of the discovery of their adulterous relationship, flee the scene of the accident. Bardem's film focuses on the tribulations and strains on the characters' relationship from that point onwards and the lengths they go to keep their crimes of adultery and murder under cover.

Spanish director Juan Antonio Bardem (1922-2002) explored and made use of a variety of genres within his early career. In Esa pareja feliz (1951) and ¡Bienvenido Mr Marshall! (1953), both joint ventures with contemporary Luis García Berlanga, Bardem through the conventions of comedy was able to develop a structure of parody and political satire. In Cómicos (1954), Bardem was heavily influenced by the genre of Hollywood melodrama, in particular that of films such as All About Eve (1950), a convention he would continue to develop throughout later films including Calle Mayor (1956).

Throughout Muerte de un ciclista Bardem develops a compound of contrasting style and genre to represent key issues within Spanish society. Prominent themes and genres within the film include film noir and the femme fatale mould, the Hitchcock suspense thriller, Italian neo-realism and soviet montage. Bardem uses these contrasting elements directly after one another in order to create what Marsha Kinder refers to as a 'rupture' within the centrality of the plot of the Hollywood melodrama. In the same way as the unnatural cutting and contrasting imagery Bardem uses, the film is able to ideologically expose corrupt and immoral elements of the Franco regime. The focus of this essay is to explore and to investigate these various elements and analyse the way in which they come together in forming a hybrid that is unique within the history of Spanish cinema.

Through the usage of a variety of contrasting elements and genre Bardem is able to ideologically expose the corrupt elements of the Franco regime. Today Muerte de un ciclista stands as a critique of the conformist values that it ridicules and attempts to tear apart. It breaks all the rules and shows the power of cinema to revolutionise daily life. In the same way as Bardem's characters of María José who breaks the conformist gender rules of Francoist Spain, Matilde who rebels against the institutional system and Juan who goes against the corruption and falseness of his class background, so too does Muerte de un ciclista rebel both by taking a stand against the corrupt Franco regime and also by breaking the rules of mainstream conventional cinema in order to present something vitally fresh and unique in Spanish film. Alfred Hitchcock once noted that it is important to know the limits of commercial cinema. Bardem is able to successfully use a clash of genre to stretch the viewer close to an absolute limit and is subsequently able to breakdown and underline the key political issues surrounding contemporary Spanish society. In the same way as the moral courage that the character of Juan is able to attain, Bardem seeks to signify the same moral fibre that the Spanish regime strove to repress. Like the broken window imagery that Bardem puts forward towards the end of the film, so too does a hole within the melodramatic centrality serve as a central element within the film's plot in order to be clashed with and torn apart. It is through this hybrid and "rupture" of genre that Juan Antonio Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista has been able to create a quintessential feat in Spanish cinema.

Harrison Cohen

"What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?" – Lady Macbeth

Let me mildly dissent from the majority of my fellow IMDBers below in mildly praising this good but not great film that is not content to be simply a solid noir with a beautiful, sensually decadent femme fatale and interestingly set at the height (or depths, depending on the depth of your antifa leanings), of Franco's Spain, but instead needs to show off its intellectual cred by going all "Crime And Punishment" on us with the attendant soul searching, breast beating and philosophizing which is bearable when Dostoevsky does it, 'cause he's a friggin GENIUS, but is a bit of a bore when essayed by Juan Antonio Bardem, who is not. Give it a B minus.

It's a great premise, and director Juan Antonio Bardem plunges us immediately into the drama of a pair of lovers who accidentally hit a bicyclist on a deserted road and then just leave him to die. As the story unfolds, we find out more these people and the setting itself. The man (Alberto Closas) is a math professor who got his job through his powerful brother-in-law, and the woman (Lucia Bosè) has been his lover since before the Spanish Civil War, but who left him while he was off fighting it in order to marry into wealth and a higher social standing. Both are thus privileged, but somewhat morally compromised even before the accident. By contrast, the victim is from a much more humble background, which we see when the professor tries to visit his widow. Still later, we find that the place where the accident occurred, on a road through a barren landscape, was also where the professor had been fighting in the war, and there is clearly meaning in that fact. (As an aside, the landscape may remind you of the 1973 Spanish film 'The Spirit of the Beehive', and there is something eerie and sad about these films made under authoritarian rule that seem to show the devastation of the spirit via this type of scenery.)

The pair are threatened when a pianist/art critic (Carlos Casaravilla) begins making oblique comments hinting that he knows something, and then later when the pair disagree about whether to admit what they've done or not. This tension is strong in the beginning, but falters a bit with an unnecessary subplot involving one of the professor's students, as well as in becoming a bit too much of a morality tale. It's also pretty clear what the art critic knows, but the pretense for ambiguity is carried on a little too long, and this interesting subplot and character aren't taken advantage of in better ways. It picks up towards the end though, with Bosè delivering some great moments through the coolness of her eyes, and a dramatic finish.

The film makes social points in showing how far the wealthy will go to obtain or maintain their position, and you can see in it political commentary too. After the war, society is stratified in unfair ways, with a big gap between the powerful and the poor, and indeed, the powerful can sometimes believe they are above the law. The scene of the crime being near a battlefield seems to mean that this horrifying but relatively small act is a microcosm of much larger crimes having been committed against Spain, or something along those lines. Seen from that perspective, perhaps the ending is less the natural conclusion of a morality tale, and more a subversive message, which was interesting to think about. It's when I consider these aspects and the courage it took for Bardem to make films like this under Franco that I liked 'Death of a Cyclist' best. As just a drama alone, it's probably just average, but it could be rated higher because of this context.

This movie started well enough. With the death of a cyclist.

Man gets out of the car, horrified. Woman gets out and tells him they should get going, forget the cyclist. Cyclist dies. Couple feels guilty.

So far, so good. I thought I was seeing a first-class psychological thriller.

Then we meet the piano-playing weasel, Rafa. Who seems to know what happened and is holding it over the couple.

If the movie had continued on that path, we might have had a noir worth talking about.

Sadly, Commie Bardem must have used the rushes from the first part of the film to convince dictator Franco's henchmen to greenlight the film. Because it soon descends into a polemic about class. A very, very steep descent.

I mean, does anybody really care about Matilde the math student?

It's ends up being a lot of yackety-yacking and whispering in discreet corners of rooms. Stuck in the mud of its own thin premise.

I am good with the ending. It's how Bardem got there that's the problem.

This and his next film 'Calle Mayor' established Juan Antonio Bardem as one of the world's leading filmmakers although as a Communist his far from complimentary view of those who had enriched themselves under Franco's regime was hardly likely to endear him to the authorities. He was in fact arrested whilst filming 'Calle Mayor' and was still in prison when 'Muerte de un Ciclista' won the International Film Critics' Award at Cannes.

Thematically it is inspired by Tolstoy's 'Resurrection' and filmically shows the influence of Antonioni's 'Cronaca di un amore'. Indeed Francois Truffaut, never one to mince his words, accused Bardem of plagiarism. Granted, there are what one critic has referred to as 'reinventions of Antonioni settings' but for this viewer at any rate these would probably not have occurred to me had they not been pointed out and certainly did not lessen my appreciation of Bardem's film.

The main link of course is the presence in both films of the charismatic Lucia Bosé, playing on both occasions an adulterous wife. Her lover here is well played by Alberto Closas but his character's crisis of conscience and moralisings somehow lack conviction. As the idealistic Matilde the lovely Bruna Corra provides a counterpoint to the self-obsessed Maria of Bosé. It is however the Uruguayan character actor Carlos Casaravilla who registers most strongly as a 'camp' art critic whose bitterness conceals a painful loneliness.

What strikes one most about the film is its technical brilliance. Atmospherically shot by Alfredo Fraile, the framing, compositions and use of close-ups are excellent and with the assistance of Margarita Orchoa, the only editor with whom Bardem worked until her death in the mid-sixties, there is an extremely effective use of cross-cutting and abrupt jump cuts. There is alas a brief shot of the cameraman's hand in the back of Maria's car and one is surprised that the director allowed it to remain.

He was obliged to cut the film from 91 to 88 minutes and one is intrigued as to what those three minutes contained. Needless to say censorship of the time required Maria to be punished for her crime and the ending, albeit highly melodramatic, is well handled and supremely ironic.

Despite being derivative in parts, this remains a landmark in post Civil War Spanish cinema and it is to be lamented that much of this courageous artiste's subsequent work was affected by government control.

Spanish writer-director J.A. Bardem's (yes, he was the uncle of Javier Bardem from maternal side) guilty conscience drama stars Italian belle Lucia Bosé as Maria Jose, a young woman who is married with a rich husband Miguel (Toso), but on the quiet, she rekindles the affair with her old flame Juan (Closas), who is stuck in a job as a university's adjunct professor, which he doesn't like, by dint of nepotism which he also consciously detests.

In the stark opening shots, we see a cyclist insouciantly riding out of the low-hanging frame, then a vintage car rushes from the opposite side, and it abruptly stops, viewers don't directly witness the accident, it is Maria Jose, who is in the driver's seat with Juan riding the shotgun, they are heading back to the city from their regular tryst, and manifestly, Bardem informs us Juan is the one, whose conscience encourages him to rescue the still-breathing cyclist, but Maria Jose, in a classic femme fatale mold, simply nips the idea with her dour look and both leave hurriedly from the scene, hoping that they haven't been seen by any curious onlookers.

Lucky for them, it turns out nobody witnesses the accident (claims by the newspaper), the cyclist died, but paranoia starts to gnaw at the two lovers, a slimy art critic Rafa (Casaravilla), a frequent guest of upper-class parties which Maria Jose and Miguel often hang out at, or sometimes host, sneakily suggests that he has seen and known something despicable between Maria Jose and Juan, which drastically pesters a high-strung Maria Jose; while Juan, distracted by the escalating guilt, one-sidedly halts the exam of a student Matilde (Corrà), which eventually stimulates a mass protest from the students, yet, on a brighter side, it reignites Juan's derailed moral sense, he prepares to convince Maria Jose to turn themselves in for the crime, but, is she ready to give up all the glittering trappings of an affluent marriage? The reactions to the opening accident presage the film's finale, regardless, they must pay for their misdeeds, Jardem will use whatever comes handy to let poetic justice reign in the upshot.

It seems that subtlety and rhetoric is not Jardem's strongest suit, adorned by a neorealism- inspired efficiency and highly expressive close-ups to follow the characters' movements and actors' (sometimes hammy, I'm not referring to you Mr. Casaravilla) delivery, the film sticks to a conventional and even somewhat stiff narrative arc without intricacy to animate the pair's doomed downward spiral (admittedly, my eyelids were struggling for separation in the scenes where Juan experiences a facile epiphany), a doe-eyed Closas and an over-mature Bosé cry out for the potency of their professed affection, which should've made the denouement more poignant. Overall, DEATH OF A CYCLIST stings as Jardem's diatribe against the decaying and morally- corrupted upper-class of Spain under Franco's dictatorship, only it seems a shade stilted from the eyes of a today's first-time viewer.

(1955) Death of a Cyclist/ Muerte de un ciclista (In Spanish with English subtitles) THRILLER

Co-written and directed by Juan Antonio Bardem, which at the opening, an unknown cyclist gets hit, and when a man in the vehicle attempts to find him some help he then abides to the lady who was sitting in the car next to him. At this point, we are oblivious in terms of the situation at hand. Viewers are baffled as to know why she made him do this, and we soon find out that the lady in question is an already married woman, Maria (Lucía Bosé) and that she was attempting to hide an extra marital affair with a substitute math instructor, Juan (Alberto Closas). There's some great conversation exchanges that does not feel too outdated.

I saw this movie when it just appeared in the movie theaters. Remembering the deep impression it made on me, I decided to watch it again now. It started very well, but somewhere in the middle it lost the air and became simplistic and predictable, although the beautiful Lucia Bose continued to draw the attention. But the rest of the actors were absolutely unbelievable, especially when the great Spanish lover started to feed us with social cliches and trivialities. At that moment the whole thrill gone. It could've been much better, if the thriller was concentrating on the criminal story rather than the anti-bourgeois propaganda.

This is a brave movie: it wants to depict the hypocrisies of the high social class in spanish franco's regime while showing to the viewer the huge social differences between classes. How people are just elements in a wheel that obliges them to be something they aren't in order to protect their statuses. both juan and Maria Jose don't feel they deserve their plays: one thinks about nepotism the other while fighting for her social position is not deeply happy with that.

the movie describes very well their relationship - why they aren't officialy together, why both despise themselves and what they've become: even though one of them is way more consiouscly guilty about it and the other views this as a need. It's like veryone is lying to each other in order to protect their own lives. they feel they are imposters, but they dont want to be discovered as such: until one of them is enlightened and the other don't seem to follow the same path.

the movie also critizices that society and their shalowness, their rituals that have 0 meaning beause half of the country was starving, their plays, their boot licking towards american figures - and when someone kinda threats all of this for his own personal gain people get scared or don't believe. the film is about someone that this unfaithful couple killed but it turns out to be about why this couple isn't officialy together and what they do to protect themselves.

Even though i think the last part of the film is a bit weaker than the rest i can't do anything but admire the fabulous piece of work. the script is very well written almost in an hitchcockian way - just with way more social commentary that doesn't want to be just entertainment per se. it is filmed beautifully with some awesome shots, the montage is also extremely well made, the sound and the cinematography is beautiful. we can feel the suspicious environment the fear of being expose, the anxiety of having their fragile lives put upside down because an incident they created to a "peasant".

it's actually interesting to see recent spanish movies like "contratiempo" being heavily influenced by this. we know this is a film that wants to make history, that wnts to grab country by the balls and questioning it.. i'm sad portugal didn't follow this route but i know how hard it would have been. bardem did a document about his time that prevails in any time: it's just n amazing piece of work that completely stays solid now a days. really loved it. it's not perfect but it's mesmerizing. and makes us wonder if love ever played a part here.

What a good movie! Was this movie really made seventy years ago? This movie is for years to come. The woman in the movie is very beautiful and she was a really great actress. It is very sad that this actor died because of Corona. The film fits neatly together like puzzle pieces. The end of the movie is unexpected. I think it was the best ending this movie could have had. Be sure to watch this movie. This movie is really beautiful.