“All of Spanish cinema derives from Buñuel and Berlanga. It’s unfair that Berlanga hasn’t been accorded the same status or importance as Buñuel.”
– Pedro Almodóvar
State executioner Amadeo (José Isbert) lines up undertaker Jose Luis (Italian star Nino Manfredi) to wed his daughter Carmen (Emma Penella), a proposition that includes several tangible benefits but one significant drawback: Jose Luis is expected to step into his prospective father-in-law’s position when he retires. Well, he figures its unlikely that he will ever have to actually use the garotte, right… ?
This under-seen classic of Spanish cinema is not just a condemnation of the death penalty (still very much in use in Franco’s Spain) but a scathing black comic critique of the social hierarchies and economic frameworks that entrap us all. General Franco would denounce Berlanga as “worse than a Communist, he’s a bad Spaniard,” but since the dictator’s death El verdugo has come to be regarded as the greatest Spanish film ever made.
It’s an indictment of capital punishment on par with Oshima’s DEATH BY HANGING and Kieslowski’s A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING, but this pitch-black comedy, released at the peak of the Franco era, is less timely agitprop than timeless study in ordinary desperation.
Jose Teodoro, Film Comment
A hidden gem for lovers of morbid, grotesque social comedies.
Nicolas Bell, ioncinema.com
Regularly voted by its country’s critics as the best Spanish film of all time, Berlanga’s brilliantly dark comedy on the peculiar horror of the garotte has not lost its power over the years. Full of sharp and disturbing insights into the corrupt world engendered by the Francoist mentality.
Time Out
Luis García Berlanga
Nino Manfredi, Emma Penella, José Isbert, José Luis López Vázquez
Spain
1963
In Spanish with English subtitles
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Nazario Belmar
Screenwriter
Luis García Berlanga, Rafael Azcona, Ennio Flaiano
Cinematography
Tonino Delli Colli
Editor
Alfonso Santacana
Original Music
Miguel Asins Arbó
Art Director
Luis Argüello
Also in This Series
This year’s New Spanish Cinema is packed with an exceptionally strong line-up — award-winning cinema, an Opening Gala featuring tapas and wine, and a flamenco-inspired VIFF Live.
The Blue Star
In crisis, a popular singer quits Spain to backpack in Argentina. There he comes under the spell of a veteran musician, who teaches him the art of chacareras, zambas and vidalas. It's a journey of musical kinship and spiritual reawakening.
Forastera
In this mysterious and subtle coming of age drama, teenager Cata is soaking up the sun, smoking furtive cigarettes, and enjoying a summer break with her grandparents and her younger sis in Mallorca. That is, until Cata's beloved abuela collapses...
Afternoons of Solitude
Pacification director Albert Serra turns his unflinching gaze on the subject of bullfighting, and in particular the famous young matador Andrés Roca Rey. The film challenges us to look its subject square in the eye and draw our own conclusions.
The Executioner
Regularly cited as the greatest Spanish film ever made, Berlanga's masterpiece is a pitch black comedy about an undertaker lined up by the state executioner to marry his beautiful daughter -- but he'll also have to inherit the old man's job.
The Flamenco Guitar of Yerai Cortés + Por Derecho (On Their Own Right) Live
Winner of the Goya Award for Best Documentary, this is an exquisite and surprisingly intimate portrait of the brilliant young guitarist Yerai Cortés, preceded by an hour of passionate flamenco music, song and dance performed by Por Derecho.
Saturn Return
This fascinating, highly acclaimed movie is a thinly disguised history of 90s indie rockers Los Planetas, a Granada grunge outfit who cited the Velvet Underground as inspiration. It's one of the best rock movies in years.
8
The always stylish, idiosyncratic Basque auteur Julio Medem is back with one of his most ambitious films (and our closing night gala), a sweeping historical romance in eight chapters, spanning eight decades in Spanish history from the 1930s to the present day.