Sightlines · reception

How The Executioner was received

1963 · Luis García Berlanga · The Executioner on Sightlines

The arc

In 1963 it was a scandal — Franco's regime cut it, and Spain's ambassador in Rome tried to block its Venice premiere as an attack on the country — yet it still took the FIPRESCI critics' prize there. Today it's routinely voted the greatest Spanish film ever made.

What’s debated

The perennial cinephile fight it fuels: is this — and not Buñuel's Viridiana — the true summit of Spanish cinema, and how did the sharpest satire of Francoist Spain get made under Franco?

Its footprint

It's the cornerstone of the Spanish black-comedy tradition, so foundational that 'berlanguiano' — Berlanga-esque, for any absurd, chaotic, very Spanish situation — was officially added to the Royal Spanish Academy's dictionary in 2020.

Where it stands

A 'you must have seen this' of Spanish cinema — canon at home, still a discovery for many international Letterboxd users, who tend to emerge asking why nobody told them sooner.

Did you know? The film so enraged the regime that Franco is famously reported to have said Berlanga was 'not a communist — he is something worse: a bad Spaniard.'