​Spanish director’s black comedy masterpiece

Most fans of international cinema are probably familiar with the names of Luis Buñuel, Pedro Almodóvar, and Alejandro Amenábar. Other important Spanish directors such as Luis García Berlanga, however, are little-known outside of Spain, even though Berlanga’s “Plácido” (1961) was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

The film that Spanish filmmakers, critics, and Berlanga himself consider his masterpiece, “El Verdugo” (“The Executioner”) (1963), recently underwent a 4K digital restoration from the original 35mm camera negative. Several weeks ago it came out on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.

Among the reasons Berlanga is held in such high esteem in Spain are his ability to capture the spirit, tradition, and personality of the typical everyday Spanish people, to give a wryly comic spin on otherwise serious subjects, and to make sense of what appears chaotic and absurd on the surface. His name even became a popular adjective in Spain to describe films and life situations that resembled his personal style, like “Fellini-esque” or “Capra-esque.”

All the time he managed to sneak in unusually strong elements of social and political criticism despite the strict censorship under Franco’s regime. “The Executioner” is a perfect example of this. It’s an amusing portrait of working-class life with man and his family attempting to forge a better life and maintain their personal sense of what is right as they deal with the benefits and nightmares of government bureaucracy as well as their own individual eccentricities. At the same time it’s a seriocomic argument against capital punishment.

The director was frequently condemned by both right-wing and left-wing critics for the same films, but his purpose was to show the truth as he saw it, in the context of a story and characters that would appeal to general movie audiences, not just critics, political activists, or art cinemas.

Berlanga admired Italian neorealism and contemporary European filmmakers like Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman, films not available to see in Spain at the time. He puts a brief amusing homage to Antonioni and Bergman in a scene of “The Executioner.” In fact the film itself is a Spanish-Italian co-production, with Italian star Nino Manfredi (“Bread and Chocolate”) playing the title role.

At the beginning of the story Manfredi’s character, José Luis Rodríguez, is an undertaker who lives with his mild-mannered tailor brother and abrasive, domineering sister-in-law. He has little social life due to his profession being distasteful to women. After an assignment to pick up a corpse after an execution, he reluctantly gives the elderly but cheerful executioner Amadeo (veteran Spanish character actor José Isbert) a ride home, where he meets Amadeo’s marriageable daughter Carmen. She also has trouble attracting suitors due to her father’s unsavory profession, so of course they hit it off immediately.

Amadeo has finally been awarded a government apartment, thanks to his government job. However, he realizes that he will no longer be eligible for it after his retirement, which is rapidly approaching. He attempts to convince José to take over his position, which he’ll try to arrange through high-placed references that can bypass bureaucratic regulations, but the young man is mortified at having to kill people for a living.

When Amadeo discovers José and Carmen have been sleeping together, there’s a hastily-arranged wedding and everything changes, since the executioner job has traditionally been handed down from father to son and he’s now in the family.

The uneasy José is not happy with the responsibility hanging over him but Amadeo reassures him that many executions are cancelled due to last-minute pardons or the condemned person dying in advance, so he probably won’t have to do it often. Indeed, his son is born and over a year old before he’s required to carry out his official duties.

Then he gets a notice that an execution is required on the island of Majorca.

The government will pay all expenses for his family to accompany him, so the morbid business trip suddenly becomes a family vacation. It’s a welcome diversion until José eventually realizes he will be forced to perform his first execution, a situation played for darkly bitter satire as he is even more reluctant to do the deed than the condemned man is to have it done. This scene towards the end of the plot is what gave Berlanga the original idea for the movie, inspired by a news article of just such an incident.

Criterion’s Blu-ray has outstanding picture quality (although the opening credits are a bit softer than the rest of the film) and very good sound.

A nice selection of bonus features includes an illustrated leaflet, a brief introductory interview by Pedro Almadóvar recorded for this disc, a new hour-long in-depth documentary on Berlanga’s career, an interesting half-hour program with a young filmmaker trying to learn more about the film, made for Spanish TV in 2009, and a trailer. Although there is no audio commentary, the two documentaries and leaflet essay provide a strong background on the film and director.

THE EXECUTIONER on Blu-ray -- Movie: A- / Video: A / Audio: A / Extras: A-