#840: BERLANGA, Luis Garcia: The Executioner (1963)

BERLANGA, Luis Garcia (Spain)
The Executioner [1963]
Spine #840
Blu-ray

This masterpiece of black humor, beloved in Spain but too little seen elsewhere, threads a scathing critique of Franco-era values through a macabre farce about an undertaker who marries an executioner's daughter and reluctantly takes over her father's job so the family can keep their government-allotted apartment. As caustic today as it was in 1963, this early collaboration between Luis Garcia Berlanga and his longtime screenwriter Rafael Azcona is an unerring depiction of what Berlanga called "the invisible traps that society sets up for us." A furiously funny personal attack on capital punishment, The Executioner evaded the state censors who sought to suppress it, and today is regarded as one of the greatest Spanish films of all time.

92 minutes

Black & White
Monaural
in Spanish
1:85:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2016

Director/Writers

Story by Luis Garcia Berlanga and Rafael Azcona.

Screenplay by Berlanga and Azcona.

Berlanga was 42 when he directed The Executioner.

The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Ten-page wraparound featuring an essay by film critic David Cairns.

Commentary

None.

Interview

With filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar.

Program

On director Berlanga, featuring interviews with his son José Luis Berlanga; film critic Carlos F. Heredero; writers Fernando R. Lafuente and Bernardo Sánchez Salas; and director of the Berlanga Film Museum Rafael Maluenda.

Spanish television program

From 2009 on The Executioner, featuring archival interviews with Berlanga.

Trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

99

By Director
By Spine #