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The Executioner (1963 film)

The Executioner
ElVerdugo'63.jpg
Poster
Directed by Luis García Berlanga
Produced by Naga Films
Zebra Films
Written by Rafael Azcona
Starring Nino Manfredi
Pepe Isbert
Emma Penella
José Luis López Vázquez
Cinematography Tonino Delli Colli
Edited by Alfonso Santacana
Release date
  • 1963 (1963)
Running time
90 minutes
Country Spain
Italy
Language Spanish

The Executioner (Spanish: El Verdugo) is a 1963 Spanish black comedy film directed by Luis García Berlanga. It is widely considered one of the masterpieces of Spanish cinema.

The story starts with the main character (an old executioner in Spain in the early 60's) approaching retirement age. As his profession is quite rare, he (a very gentle and nice man, caring, and proud of traditions) begins to worry about who might take his place when he retires. He has a daughter, but, unfortunately, she seems doomed to perpetual "spinsterhood"; as soon as any prospective groom learns about her dad and her dad's "trade", he runs away from her, scared. However, a new character enters: the local undertaker, a young handsome man who has exactly the same problem... No girl wants him given his profession. So, you have the woman whom almost nobody would marry and the man whom almost nobody would marry. Obviously, they are meant for each other and soon get married.

The Executioner was the eighth feature film written and directed by Luis García Berlanga in collaboration with his longtime associate, Rafael Azcona. The story pivots upon the fate of a pleasant, if somewhat timid, young undertaker whose dream is to go to Germany and become a mechanic. This dream is thwarted when he happens to meet the executioner in a prison where both of them are plying their trade. In spite of the aversion that the young man (and everyone else) feels for the executioner, he not only ends up marrying the executioner's daughter, but even takes over his father-in-law's business.

The Executioner is a farce or domestic comedy filled with macabre touches and scenes of black humor in which the taboos associated with death are transgressed. Even the actual mode of execution is the subject of morbid jokes as the executioner, who garrots his victims, measures the neck size of his future son-in-law. The film is punctuated with these bits of gallows humor as well as with comic reversals that take the audience by surprise. A fine example of this occurs at the end of the movie when the young executioner is carried kicking and screaming like the victim into the prison where he will perform his first execution.


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