New Arrival The Executioner (#840)

This masterpiece of black humor, beloved in Spain but too little seen elsewhere, threads a scathing critique of Franco-era values through a macabre farce about an undertaker who marries an executioners daughter and reluctantly takes over her fathers job so the family can keep their government-allotted apartment. As caustic today as it was in 1963, this early collaboration between Luis Garca Berlanga and his longtime screenwriter Rafael Azcona is an unerring depiction of what Berlanga called the invisible traps that society sets up for us. A furiously funny personal attack on capital punishment,The Executionerevaded the state censors who sought to suppress it, and today is regarded as one of the greatest Spanish films of all time.

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Film Info

• Spain
• 1963
• 92 minutes
• Black & White
• 1.85:1
• Spanish
• Spine #840

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• New interview with filmmaker Pedro Almodvar
• New program on director Luis Garca Berlanga, featuring interviews with his son Jos Luis Berlanga; film critic Carlos F. Heredero; writers Fernando R. Lafuente and Bernardo Snchez Salas; and director of the Berlanga Film Museum Rafael Maluenda
• Spanish television program from 2012 onThe Executioner,featuring archival interviews with Berlanga
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by film critic David Cairns
  
  New cover by Brian Stauffer