Not on Your Life
Luis García Berlanga · 1963
The Executioner (1963), directed by Luis García Berlanga, follows an undertaker who marries the daughter of a state executioner, then reluctantly assumes the role himself to secure housing. Shot in black and white, it uses deadpan comedy and precise, unadorned craft to examine moral compromise under Francoist bureaucracy — not as ideology, but as paperwork, pension rules, and quiet family negotiations.