Luis Garcia Berlanga’s much-admired, even revered Franco-era film about an undertaker who marries an executioner’s daughter (then fights against taking over the 'family franchise' which he needs to keep his new government-sponsored apartment!) has the shape of dark, bitter comedy, but not the spirit. It’s critical rep won on intentions. Playing like an off-shoot of the Italian Commedia All’Italiana movement, and no wonder with Nino Manfredi in the lead*; Ennio Flaiano on script; Tonino Delli Colli lensing; perhaps the prestige of its Italian contingent helped it past Franco’s censors. Strongly influenced, if inferior to both Alberto Lattuada’s MAFIOSO/’62 (with Alberto Sordi) and Pietro Germi’s DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE/’61 (with Marcello Mastroianni), it meets those classics on equal footing only near the end, in a magnificent example of mise-en-scène, as Berlanga stages a doubled-‘Last Mile’ walk for both the condemned prisoner about to be garroted (a particularly nasty ‘hands-on’ form of execution) and for new executioner Manfredi who feels just as condemned. If only more functioned on this level, the film might live up to its bleak, comic reputation.
DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE and MAFIOSO. (*Few of Manfredi’s 100+ titles came Stateside, his best known, BREAD AND CHOCOLATE/’74, all wet. Instead, from the same year, Ettore Scola’s fine ensemble dramedy charting the lives of a group of friends over the post-war decades in WE ALL LOVED EACH OTHER SO MUCH.
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