The Witches (1969)

I was severely disappointed upon finding out that this movie wasn't an anthology film themed around witches, but instead the segments don't have a clear connecting point other than the fact that each of them stars Silvana Mangano.The animated intro is my favorite part of the movie. It's creative, somewhat humorous and has a fantastic score playing in the background. However, it's completely misleading (same as the title), as it foreshadows a plot centered about witches.The first story (The Witch Burned Alive, dir. Visconti) is weak, boring and way too long. It's the longest segment and takes up a third of the movie's runtime. The story isn't all that interesting either.The second one (Civic Sense, dir. Bolognini) is easily the worst of all. It's a pointless story about a woman offering to take an injured man to the hospital. The punchline isn't really clever, the direction bland, and the story is surprisingly dull for lasting only four minutes.The third segment (The Earth as Seen from the Moon, dir. Pasolini) is the second worst. I'll give it credit for Totò's fun performance, but sadly everyone else is annoying in their role. The musical track that keeps playing gets aggravating quickly and the plot makes no sense whatsoever. The message of the story is clear only to Pasolini, and probably not even to him.The fourth story (The Girl From Sicily, dir. Rossi) has some potential, but lasts only four minutes and is over before it starts. It isn't given much time, which is shame because the plot is better than the first three story lines.The final story (An Evening Like The Others, dir. De Sica) is by far the best. Because of the plot and style, it's somewhat similar to Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits. Both Mangano and Eastwood are fun to watch and there are some clever shots and sequences, mostly the ones set in the wife's dream world. In the scene where she criticizes the comic books her son reads, you can see an issue of the comic book "Kriminal", about which I agree with her because that comic is horrible.All in all, there's no reason why this movie's premise shouldn't have been set around the actual witches.

On a sleepless night, in my late childhood I was struck by this bizarre movie, in a late-late hours rerun. It blew my mind, and I still wonder around video rentals looking for a copy, in vain. It was conceived probably as a showcase for Silvia Mangano but it is only natural that with such talented directors the movie is not about her, it is instead about them. The first and last episodes are a charming display of misogyny, being the first the silent vivisection of a woman while in the later, featuring a almost speechless Clint Stewood, a cathartic (or rather hysterical) woman lists verborhagically the common places of women paradoxes. But it is Pasollini's "Earth seen from the moon" piece that really breaks through, depicting the perfect woman - half blond, half brunet and entirely mute. His is a little fable on women leading men into idiocy, condition incarnated by famous slapstick comedian Totó. The shortest episode, "Senso Civico" is completely superfluous and echoes another superfluous over-excited-Italian-freak-in-the-traffic episode played by Roberto Begnini in Jim Jarmush's "Night on earth". Still the best pick if you want to trade insomnia for fun.

Mangano, the wife of famed producer Dino de Laurentiis, gets a royal showcase here, portraying five different women in five short films, each directed by a noted Italian director. In the first (and lengthiest) one, she is a beleaguered movie star who hides away in the large ski chalet of an acquaintance and is promptly pursued by the men and nearly deconstructed by the women. This film has some interesting camera placement and some intriguing aspects, but isn't particularly revelatory or surprising. One ridiculous scene has her talking into a telephone in which her husband is screaming incoherently nonstop into the other end. An impossibly young and attractive Berger has a small role as a servant. Also, viewers could possibly die from the secondhand smoke emitted from the performers! Next Mangano plays a well-dressed woman whose car is stopped at the site of an accident. She picks up an injured man and speeds through the city waving a white handkerchief, but passes various first aid stations and hospitals along the way. The man mutters unintelligibly while he ponders why she is doing this. In the third short film, she is a green-haired deaf-mute who becomes the wife of a lonely widower who has been searching the country for a bride (and a step-mother for his son.) This is by far the most unusual of the stories and is told with much bizarre imagery, whimsy and surrealism. This will make it hard to take for some people, but it has value as an exercise in oddity and metaphor. Next up, Mangano plays a fiery Sicilian woman who has been wronged. When she expresses her shame to her father, it kicks off a whole chain of assassinations. Finally, she is a bored and unappreciated housewife married to Eastwood (of all people!) who complains to him about the mundane existence they share all the while fantasizing about what their life was once like and could be again with a little imagination. This one probably holds the most interest of the five because of the presence of a boyishly young Eastwood (who is quite game for the various shenanigans in the piece) and the myriad of striking costume and hairstyle changes that occur on Mangano throughout. It is a must-see for fans of the over-the-top "What a Way to Go!"-esque clothes of the time. Why didn't anyone ever make this lady a Bond villainess? One section has her being courted by a gaggle of sexy comic book characters like Flash Gordon and Batman. All but the last film suffer from the dreaded English dubbing, but some amount of entertainment value manages to come through. The title sequence is unusual and interesting. This melange of stories will not appeal to everyone, but most viewers will at least get a slight kick out of the last one if only for the sight of pup Eastwood and the way-out clothes in the fantasy sequences.

Surreal, absurdist (kind of), very Italian, very 60s. You should definitely see this movie if you like a) 60's clothes, b) 60's movie sets, c) weird movies, d) Silvana Mangano, and e) obscure Clint Eastwood titles (yes, he's in it, too), among other things.