¨La muerte y el leñador¨ or "La mort et le bûcheron"(1963) is the title of the episode directed by Luís Garcia Berlanga for the film ¨Las 4 Verdades¨, the omnibus film composed of a total of four stories based on Jean de Fontaine's fables, following the original idea of Frederie Grendel and Hervé Bromberger. It's an entertaining and fun anthology picture with diverting segments, giving nice performances from a splendid all European-star-cast, some brief moral teachings and likeable events. This co-production France/Italy/Spain is directed by a director different, 4 European filmmakers: Alessandro Blasetti, Hervé Bromberger, René Clair , Luis Garcia Berlanga. This restoration corresponds to the episode directed by Luís Garcia Berlanga, which has been extracted from the original film, hence its abrupt beginning and the absence of the film's poster, as well as the original credits.
"Les quatre vérités" , ¨Las cuatro verdades¨aka "The Four Truths" is an anthology film that consists of four segments interwoven by brief cartoon images about animals, being all loosely parodying fables from the 17th-century French poet Jean de la Fontaine. Dealing with 4 witty and wonderful tales of marriage and what comes before...and after. Stars famous European actors, such as: Charles Aznavour, Leslie Caron, Monica Vitti, Sylva Koscina, Rossano Brazzi, Hardy Kruger. The US cut usually features only 3 segments shot in Paris, France , being cut the best shot in Madrid, Spain : "La mort et le bûcheron" directed by Luis Garcia Berlanga .
The funny first segment titled ¨The Crow and the Fox¨ or "Le corbeau et le renard", followed by "The Tortoise and the Hare" (in this episode Monica Vitti won David di Donatello Golden Plate Awards 1963 for her performance), "Two Pigeons" and the fourth segment "Death and the Woodcutter" (La muerte y el leñador) results to be better than the others, being directed by the great Spanish director Luis Garcia Berlanga , concerning a common organ grinder (street performer who plays mechanical musical instrument called street organ on the Madrid town for a living), he is nicknamed El Rubio (Hardy Krüger) and driven to the edge of sanity by bureaucracy represented by a strict State Official (Agustin Gonzalez) , it was cut from the US release for its serious/comical tone. And including brief appearances from excellent Spanish secondaries, such as: Manuel Alexandre, Xan das Bolas, José Luis Coll, Félix Fernández, Lola Gaos, Agustín González, José Guardiola, José Manuel Martín and Ángel Álvarez.
For the restoration, the following materials from the Spanish Film Library were used: For the image, the black and white negative duplicate of the image on 35 mm acetate support has been digitized in 4K. -For the audio, this has been digitized from a 35 mm copy on acetate support because it has a slightly higher quality than the sound negative.
