The Executioner
(El Verdugo)
Luís García Berlanga / Spain / 1963 / 91 min
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Berlanga’s most elegant film tells the story of a funeral-home employee who marries a government executioner’s daughter and – in order to get an apartment – agrees to take over his father-in-law’s job with the hope of never actually having to perform it. El verdugo 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.
Through a savagely black humorous tone, The Executioner is a vehement condemnation of the death penalty, which caused the Spanish government to try (unsuccessfully) to stop it being screened at the Venice Festival and later to make numerous cuts.