Pierrepoint (5 Stars)

This is a moving drama of unimaginable depth. I admit that I sat crying during some of the final scenes.

Albert Pierrepoint is the most prolific executioner in British history. Between 1933 and 1955 he hanged 608 criminals. He chose the job of hangman because it had been his father's trade, and he wanted to "continue in the family business". The film shows him as having the utmost respect for his victims. Whatever they'd done, by dying they paid for their crimes, and by executing them he was making them innocent. He was not just serving society, he was serving his victims. Not only did he hang his victims, he also washed the corpse and laid it in the coffin.

Pierrepoint remained anonymous in his early years. Even his closest friends did not know his occupation. Since hanging was a free-lance job, payment only made per hanging, he had a regular job delivering groceries. He achieved celebrity status after the war, when he was sent to Germany where he hanged 202 war criminals. Until then he had maintained a strict separation between his work and his social life, which was disrupted when his friends began to praise him for his work. The turning point for him came in 1950 when he had to hang a close friend.

In 1955 he resigned over a disagreement about payment in the case of last-minute reprieves. If he travelled to an execution and the prisoner was pardoned, he received no payment, not even to cover his travel expenses. After his retirement opponents of the death penalty claimed that he had crossed over to their way of thinking, but despite a few statements quoted out of context he never regretted his career choice.

The American release of this film incorrectly calls it "Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman". Albert Pierrepoint resigned in 1955, but executions were carried out by other executioners until 1964.