The Executioner / El verdugo (1963) + Extras

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The Executioner / El verdugo (1963) + Extras

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At the end of the 1950s Berlanga met the man who would become (and remains) the doyen of Spanish screenwriters, Rafael Azcona. A hitherto impecunious novelist and hack writer at the humourist weekly magazine La Codorniz, Azcona had begun his film career, adapting his own novels, for the Italian director Marco Ferreri. The encounter with Berlanga was to prove fortuitous and the two men would work together for the following 35 years. Berlanga's masterpieces Plácido (1961) and El verdugo (The Executioner, 1963) were among their first collaborations. Both films portrayed a Spain undergoing the transition to economic modernity. Likewise, they combine Berlanga's sense of carnival with Azcona's savagely black humour. From Plácido onwards the work of Berlanga would be marked by its chaotic depiction of the unpredictable crowd and by his major contribution to cinematic technique, his particular use of the long take or sequence shot.

Berlanga's use of the sequence shot is central to a much remarked upon feature of his cinema: its choral quality. Berlanga's cinematic composition (and his comedy) emerges out of the representation of the crisis of an individual (who is usually male) in the conflictual context of the multitudinous group. Furthermore, his faithfulness to the same group of repertory actors (a generation trained in theatre and very often in music hall) that, with few exceptions, has remained with him for the last 40 years, gives a particularly 'spontaneous' feel to his cinema. This team, together with Berlanga's idiosyncratic camera work, has enabled the director to portray the 'popular' while retaining his own very personal style. In this way, just as he has violated critical categories of popular film, he has also complicated established approaches to auteur cinema.

…El verdugo, arguably his finest film, struck at the very heart of the repressive Francoist state. El verdugo tells the story of a man who, on marrying the daughter of the state executioner, is condemned to inherit his father-in-law's job. This is a story that interrogates and unveils the anatomy of Spanish society at an historical turning point. The film, for example, unpicks the reality of the country's 1960s tourist boom that would, on the one hand, help consolidate the revived fortunes of the Spanish economy, while on the other, would bring with it the unwanted 'foreign' values of liberalism and sexual freedom.

El verdugo provoked a major controversy. Selected to compete at the Venice Film Festival, the Spanish government fought strenuously to prevent its screening. By pure coincidence, the regime had attracted international attention and outrage earlier the same year by executing three of its political opponents: Communist Party member Julián Grimau and anarchists Francisco Granados Mata and Joaquín Delgado Martínez. Ironically, but very typically of the critical reception of Berlanga's work, there was no consensus of opinion as to how to approach El verdugo. At Venice (where it was acclaimed and awarded the critics prize) Italian anarchists saw it as an apology for the Francoist state. On the other hand, the Spanish ambassador to Italy denounced the film as a slur on the Spanish nation and Franco himself was widely reported as saying "Berlanga is not a Communist, he is worse than a Communist, he is a bad Spaniard."

It is with these two films that Berlanga breached the borders of Spain and his international status was established. His own distinctive and discordant voice emerges from out of a mosaic of cinematic debts from both home and abroad. Among these influences are not only Capra, but also figures such as Jean Renoir, René Clair and, above all, his close friend and ally in anarchy, Federico Fellini.

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The Executioner / El verdugo (1963) + Extras

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Extras:
- Comments and Anecdotes
- Interview with Director
- Trailer