Popular reviews

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  Review by sher ★★★★ 5

  could not tell the two dudes apart bro

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  Review by Lara Pop ★★★★ 28

  #Watchlist 2021

  'We could lose everything.'
  'We've already lost everything.'

  Polanski's Knife in the Water but the ending is how it starts. Death of a Cyclist is an underseen Spanish gem of a tightly packed psycho-thriller. It doesn't bring anything new to the table but in the world it operates, everything adds up in a subtle but accessible way. This accessibility lies in its story: two lovers in secret run over a cyclist on the road but do not report the crime to the police for fear of their affair being discovered by the woman's husband. It is a simple plot but ingeniously opens all the doors for figurative and psychological associations that the film more than happily enters.

  One…

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  Review by The Reel House ★★★★

  “There’s something more important than you or me: fear.” 

  Do you ever remember the times when you were at school and you had been misbehaving and you were so utterly scared that it felt as if it was the end of the world (F.Y.I. I’m talking about breaking a pencil or some stupid shit like that). Or if you had done something bad at home and you knew that your parents would notice and even though looking back this was absolutely nothing, you were scared shitless of when your parents were going to find out.... yeah. That’s this movie. 

  The movie begins with... YOU GUESSED IT ! The “Death of a Cyclist” and the film proceeds with our two protagonists…

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  Review by sakana1 ★★★★ 5

  Vague spoilers ahead.

  Death of a Cyclist reveals the cold-hearted selfishness of upper class, Francoist Spain, a class that looks a lot like the same group in other countries, with and without fascist leaders of their own. Virtually everyone in the film, whether they're monied, upper class by virtue of their name, or the hangers-on of both, are reprehensible human beings; the only difference to be found among them is how intensely they believe in their own carefully buffed surfaces.

  Chilliest of all is María José de Castro (played by Italian actress Lucia Bosé, so beautiful that it's actually distracting), twice a member of Madrid's elite by virtue of her well-established family and her husband's money. Her days are spent…

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  Review by trolleyfreak ★★★★★

  'Death Of A Cyclist is a polemical tale that borrows the grammar of the Hitchcockian murder mystery as well as the forbidden romance of 'film noir' to achieve its ideologic ends... Beginning with the techniques that are most efficacious, it’s necessary to emphasize [Juan Antonio] Bardem’s brilliant use of cuts and dissolves throughout. What will be remembered most by viewers is the way the film jump cuts effortlessly between the seemingly primary melodrama and scenes of so-called 'social realism'..' (film critic Mark Mesaros, 2010)

  Brief Synopsis: On a deserted road heading towards Madrid, a cyclist is knocked down by a motor car driven by a woman (Lucia Bosè) who just happens to be married to a man (Otello Toso) who's…

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  Review by cassandra ★★★★ 1

  INFIDELITY. MURDER. BLACKMAIL.

  Muerte de un ciclista is a brilliant (and underrated) social commentary on extreme wealth and poverty in 1950s Spain. The film is about an upper-class professor and his (also wealthy) married mistress who accidentally hit a cyclist and leave him to die so their affair won't be found out. This selfish act leaves them consumed with guilt and as they each try to deal with their actions in their own way, the situation is further complicated with blackmail.

  The ending is just perfect. Watch it! This film deserves more recognition!

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  Review by Z ★★★★

  Watched in a double feature with good intentions, this was really good! I mean, it was slow in parts but the story is very gripping most of the way. A fun noir on any night.

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  Review by eely ★★★★

  as the great american rock band neon trees once said, “first things first, you get what you deserve.”

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  Review by Zoë 🐝 ★★★★½

  Some spoilers

  Death of a Cyclist is very similar to American noir in style, but instead of focusing on the murder, the blackmail, the adultery, the betrayal, this is a film about selfishness, from the point of view of the most selfish people in the movie. The film does not pay attention to what the title ironically highlights, the cyclist and his death, and his family's lack of money and connections that could allow the hit and run that took his life to be solved, but instead on the perpetrators, the ones with all the connections that give them a lack of suspicion but also connections that lead to all their lavish lifestyles. There is the businessman, unconnected to the…

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  Review by evilacid ★★★

  An exploration of guilt, shame and secrets. Whilst there are interesting ideas and thoughts communicated, they're often in a dry and almost academic manner. Not that the film is without style, it's that style only served to establish mood.

  From the initial guilt there are new perceptions born. These are people that live in a wealthy and upper class environment, through their numerous ruminations on their crime they find themselves feeling more and more disengaged with this way of life. Some of this gradual disconnect is delivered through the cinematography. Juan is occasionally photographed from a high angle - making him appear irregular within crowds. Or through the use of deep focus - making him feel singular and not of…

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  Review by Puffin ★★★★½ 3

  March Around the World 2018

  7/30: Spain

  A biting and bleak social-drama about a couple who strike a man with their car but do not help in fear of being caught in an affair. The weight of a heavy conscience carries the film's conflict, alongside a fear of others knowing. All the while, the upper class structure they exist within starts growing more tense, more threatening, and the two eventually become outsiders to the system.

  Inspired by Welles and Antonioni, and bearing strong resemblance to what those directors would put out after Death of a Cyclist, there's also hints of Alexander Mackendrick's "Sweet Smell of Success" which would be released two years later. Death of a Cyclist lies in a…

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  Review by Christian Doig ★★★★★

  Spain under Franco doesn't get much gloomier than in this almost metaphysical and somewhat neorealistic allegory on truth and fate, richness and poverty, sex and death, written and directed by Juan Antonio Bardem.

  There is much too bleakness in the air, indeed, to expect otherwise. Italian beauty queen Lucia Bose plays the young trophy wife to a wealthy political figure, but the crime from the title --needless to say, that death couldn't be natural-- occurs while she is with her lover, a struggling university teacher.

  The film follows the furtive couple's reaction, and their respective behaviors: his is one of progressive awakening, rooted in a long forgotten yet still living moral code. Hers, well..., she is rotten.

  Bose is beautiful…