Span­ish mas­ter Luis Gar­cía Berlan­ga final­ly gets his dues

A com­e­dy of man­ners con­tent with cre­at­ing a sus­tained sense of amuse­ment for its dura­tion rather than laugh-out-loud hys­ter­ics, The Exe­cu­tion­er is, at its core, a love sto­ry about a young under­tak­er, José (played by Ital­ian actor Nino Man­fre­di) who falls for the daugh­ter, Car­men (Emma Penel­la), of a kind­ly old exe­cu­tion­er named Amadeo (revered Span­ish actor José Isbert). They fall in love after a chance encounter brings José and Amadeo togeth­er as friends. Once the lovers are caught by a dis­traught Amadeo, he pro­pos­es a solu­tion: José must take over his work as exe­cu­tion­er once he retires, part­ly so they can hold onto an apart­ment owed to him by the state. As reluc­tant­ly as pos­si­ble, José goes along with the plan in order to be with Car­men – and their expec­tant child – but the very thought of tak­ing another’s life, in par­tic­u­lar with the bru­tal instru­ment known as the ​“gar­rote”, which stran­gles peo­ple to death, makes him sick.

Bril­liant­ly script­ed with live­ly dia­logue and vibrant char­ac­ters, The Exe­cu­tion­er is a series of con­ver­sa­tions around cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, eco­nom­ic strife, domes­tic­i­ty, and seri­ous issues some­how made to seem like tri­fling fod­der for com­ic melo­dra­ma, all the while point­ing to themes of soci­etal oppres­sion and exploita­tion, and inter­gen­er­a­tional ten­sion. Even as Amadeo takes on a stub­born­ly con­ser­v­a­tive view toward the death penal­ty and pub­lic ser­vice, Berlan­ga ren­ders him the most like­able char­ac­ter in the movie whose nar­row views are inno­cent­ly inher­it­ed from the envi­ron­ment that made him. His con­cern for his daugh­ter is sin­cere, his will­ing­ness to ​“help” José gen­er­ous, and his demeanour charming.

Man­fre­di plays José as a per­pet­u­al­ly stressed out man fol­low­ing his heart but slow­ly falling into an inevitable trap that will rob him of his val­ues. Through it all Carmen’s loy­al­ty is gen­uine to both her father and part­ner, want­i­ng them both to be hap­py. When the real­i­ty of per­form­ing an exe­cu­tion arrives, the film main­tains its light, com­ic touch, even as its cli­max becomes increas­ing­ly dark and emo­tion­al­ly challenging.

Visu­al­ly speak­ing, noth­ing calls too much atten­tion to itself, but Berlan­ga moves the cam­era freely, cre­at­ing strik­ing­ly com­posed wide shots that take advan­tage of the frame’s abil­i­ty to accom­mo­date as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, result­ing in fren­zied sequences of over­lap­ping dia­logue. Images that at first appear unre­mark­able become stir­ring in the scope of the whole film. The genius of Berlanga’s style here is in his abil­i­ty to keep the tragi­com­e­dy tonal­ly sub­tle and intel­lec­tu­al­ly overt at the same time, walk­ing the line where absur­di­ty and real­i­ty meet as one. In Spain, ​“Berlan­ga-esque” is a com­mon­ly used term, and maybe now, with the Cri­te­ri­on Collection’s release of The Exe­cu­tion­er, it will begin to work itself into our shared film vocabulary.