Comedy · Drama
Italian (El verdugo)
1963 · Directed by Luis García Berlanga · 91 min
A young undertaker's assistant befriends an elderly state executioner and his shy daughter, and the promise of a flat of his own starts to tangle his hopes. A black comedy of crowded rooms, polite euphemism and small print, set in Franco's Spain.
Why it matters in cinema history
A central work of the Spanish cinema that slipped past Franco-era censorship through humour, and a high point of the European black comedy that flourished alongside Italian commedia all'italiana in the early 1960s.
Watch with intention
Watch it as a comedy of cramped rooms, paperwork and polite euphemism, where every ordinary ambition is quietly weighed against what it might cost.
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