Luis Garcia Berlanga’s Spanish masterpiece The Executioner
aka El Verdugo (1963) is a satirical indictment of the state bureaucracy and
the violence it perpetrates with apathy. Director Berlanga was one of the
most influential & vital Spanish film-maker of his generation. He endured the brunt of
harsh censorship that marked Franco’s military dictatorship. Mr. Berlanga never
confined himself to a particular ideology and until his retirement in 1999 he
boldly addressed the moral decay of those in power. I haven’t seen any of the
films Mr. Berlanga made after 1975 (after the death of Franco). However, among
the great subversive films he made in 1950s and early 1960s, my topmost
favorite is The Executioner.
After the scandal regarding Luis Bunuel’s Virdinia (1961),
the Spanish government and censors did its best to stop the release of The
Executioner. Yet, the film managed to slip past the censors to be screened at
Venice Film Festival, where it won FIPRESCI prize. Franco himself condemned
Berlanga as ‘a bad Spaniard; worse than a communist’. The oppression and
rigidity brought upon individuals by the state authority, in the name of
responsibility is what repeatedly explored through The Executioner. The film
opens in a state prison as undertaker Jose Luis (Nino Manfredi) brings in empty
coffin and waits for the execution process to finish. Jose meets the
executioner Amadeo (Jose Isbert), a short, frail old man. Jose wonders how
simple the guy looks that if he ever met him in a café, he wouldn’t have guessed
about the old man’s profession.
Jose, of course, doesn’t even want to give a lift to Amadeo
in their van. Yet, fate lands Jose in Amadeo’s house where he
meets the executioner’s daughter Carmen (Emma Penella). Jose dreams of going to
Germany and be a mechanic. However, he soon gets entangled with Amadeo’s family.
Jose eventually marries pregnant Carmen. Thanks to Amadeo’s forty year service,
Jose may finally live in a three-bedroom apartment allocated by the state. But,
the usual bureaucratic confusion threatens to rob the family out of their
apartment dream. In order to keep the home, Jose is forced to follow Amadeo’s
profession as the old man is about to retire.
Co-written by one of the prominent Spanish screenwriter and
Berlanga’s long-time collaborator, Mr. Rafael Azcona, the script extracts lot
of humor from strangely discomfiting situations. There are a lot of Kafkaesque
elements in the way narrative observes the horrors of bureaucracy; it elegantly
juxtaposes abnormal elements with the mundane. The dead pan humor could be
enjoyed by viewers all around the world. The speedy verbiage adds a lot of
colorful shades to the humor. It’s slyly funny when Amadeo observes how the
modern criminals lack the bravery when they march for their death and also when he
laments how the profession of an executioner is grossly misunderstood. The biggest strength of the script lies in the manner it clings to realism
without being a full-blown satire or farce. Beneath the comedic edge, Berlanga
and Azcona ingrain a humanist perspective, which puts us (like Jose) in a
complete distressing situation towards the end.
The most phenomenal quality of The Executioner is the
impeccable use of mise en scene. In the majority of sequences, Berlanga opens
the shot with activities of people, not particularly relevant for the
narrative. The frustrated police officer in the prison who isn’t allowed to
drink his soup in peace; driving the coffin from airport tarmac, followed by a
line of black-clad mourners; the observation of tourist boom with the arrival
of beauty pageant contestants, the aim is to realize the strictly-regulated
domestic spaces, which propels with its own sense of logic. Director Belanger often
visually hints at Jose being a man who hides from responsibility (the kind
propagated by stringent bureaucracy). He nearly rejects to take the
executioner’s bag; he hides when Amadeo arrives to find him in Carmen’s
bedroom; he clad himself in a hilarious outfit to masquerade his profession. There’s
nothing amorous in how Jose looks at Carmen. May be, he chose to marry Carmen to
avoid a confrontation. In fact, Jose never confronts anybody. In the end, Jose
is burdened with distressing personal responsibility; the one institutional
authority imposes on him. Belanger often studies Jose’s face, full of desperate
glances, to show how he is the perfect man to bear this dehumanizing logic of
authorial figures.
There are many great visual gags which unfurls in the
background, hinting at the absurdity of the situation. Jose’s wedding sequence
is one of the most hilarious moments in the film. Mr. Belanger’s light comedic touches in the
earlier sequences pave way to more chilling observations towards the end.
Jose’s life journey is sandwiched between two long shots: In the earlier shot,
we see Jose the undertaker driving off the van from the towering prison compound,
while in the other shot Jose is dragged off across a vast white-walled corridor
to do his job. The final sequences raise some hard-hitting questions about
state-sanctioned executions. The comedic characteristics are replaced with a
more grueling realism in the final sequences. The strong sense of humanity
resonates when prison guards and priest haul the executioner forcefully rather
than the person who’s to be executed (the warden calling what Jose about to do as
an act of mercy raises some vital questions about death penalty). Although the
Italian actor Nino Manfredi is marvelous in portraying Jose, the man who signs
off his life while eating cone, the veteran actor Jose Isbert happens to the
scene-stealer. Mr. Isbert instills Amadeo with a banality and effortlessness that
could very well resonant with modern viewers. He is one of the best grumpy old man
characters in the history of cinema.
Trailer
The Executioner aka El Verdugo (92 minutes) is an excellent,
subversive dark comedy about the crumbling of personal dignity within rigid
bureaucratic structures. Director Luis Berlanga’s acerbic eye for details makes
this a must-watch.
★★★★ ½
1 comment:
Very elaborate and fitting movie review on 'The Executioner'..!
Congratulations.
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