THE WITCHES (1967) – The Blu Review

Review by Roger Carpenter

In a day and age when video distribution companies are mostly concerned with the bottom dollar and release or re-release films they know are guaranteed to sell (anyone care to count the number of US releases of The Evil Dead series or Night of the Living Dead?), one of my favorite things about Arrow Video USA is their apparent fearlessness in releasing films and box sets that are probably only going to appeal to a very small niche audience.

Along with Arrow Academy, Arrow Video USA’s arthouse imprint, the company has released a good portion of Walerian Borowcyzk’s films and is busily releasing the early works of Seijun Suzuki as well as other, relatively obscure, 50’s and 60’s Japanese films.  While I applaud Arrow for releasing these films and enjoy them all immensely, I’m just not sure the typical movie fan has a great deal of interest in much of this stuff, which is why these releases are so impressive.

One of Arrow Academy’s most recent releases is a case in point.  It’s an arthouse film. It’s also an anthology.  It’s also a quintessentially 1960’s Italian film.  And it’s entitled The Witches, though it has nothing to do with sorcery, witchcraft, or ugly, green-faced women stirring cauldrons of boiling liquid.  First of all, it will probably alienate a certain group of viewers who will be expecting, based on the title, a horror film.  Second, just how many American viewers are truly interested in 1960’s Italian arthouse omnibus films?  You see what I mean.

Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis conceived this film as a vehicle for his wife, the model and film star Silvana Mangano.  Apparently anthology films were all the rage in Italy at the time, allowing both A-list directors a chance to branch out into territory they wouldn’t necessarily attempt in a full-length film, as well as allowing up-and-coming directors a shot at directing without the producers gambling a ton of money for a full-length feature.  It was also a way to showcase a particular actor, actress, or film couple, and Mangano was a legitimate Italian starlet who competed against the likes of Sophia Loren for the title of sexiest actress in Italian cinema.  The fact that Mangano wasn’t thrilled with acting nor concerned about her career made no difference to De Laurentiis, who was arguably the most powerful producer in Italy at the time.  Along with fame, power, and wealth comes ego, and De Laurentiis wasn’t about to allow his wife to play second fiddle to Sophia Loren. Not on his watch.  So he hired some of the most powerful and prestigious directors of the day, with names like Visconti, Pasolini, Bolognini, and Rossi, and populated the film with classical European actors the likes of Annie Girardot, Francisco Rabal, Massimo Girotti, Marilu Tolo, Alberto Sordi, and even the iconic Italian comic Toto, to play in the film.  If that weren’t enough, De Laurentiis even managed to convince Clint Eastwood, a major star in Italy thanks to his Man with No Name trilogy, to play opposite his wife in one story, and helped “discover” Helmut Berger, who appears in a small role in his first screen credit here.

The film contains five stories ranging in length from about five minutes to perhaps a half-hour, all centered on a different female character played by Mangano.  Each story deals with the roles women play in society.  In the first story Mangano plays a famous actress who visits a group of friends for winter break only to create jealousy between her and the women and lust in the men.  The second story is a comic one about a woman who is constantly late stopped by an accident.  Instead of waiting for an ambulance, she volunteers to take the injured man to the hospital so she can make her appointment.  In the only story with even a remotely supernatural tinge, Toto stars as a recently widowed husband who, along with his son, search for another woman who will take care of them.  The fourth story is one in which a man seeks revenge for a woman’s honor while the last story, starring Eastwood, is again a comic tale of a couple who have lost their romantic spark.

The “witch” in each story is Mangano herself.  In Visconti’s “The Witch Burned Alive,” Mangano stars as the bewitchingly beautiful Gloria, who is fabulously and horrifically deconstructed and vilified by her lady friends when she passes out from too much drink.  As they pretend to remove her headdress and makeup to treat her illness, the women can’t help but make catty remarks about the lengths Gloria has gone to for beauty while the men verbally spar with one another—and their wives—in order to take advantage of Gloria. The end result is a brutal commentary on people—females, in particular—being taken advantage of and used as a commodity without regard to their personal feelings.

In Mauro Bolognini’s “Civic Duty,” Mangano witchily volunteers to drive an injured but conscious pedestrian to the hospital with the end goal being to make her appointment with her lover.  Thankfully it’s a super short segment as Alberto Sordi, as the injured pedestrian, is quite annoying with his nonstop running commentary from the back seat of the car.  Frankly, I’d have dumped him much earlier if I’d been the driver.

Pier Paolo Pasolini directs Toto in “The Earth Seen from the Moon,” a surreal tale about a man and his son in search of a new wife and mother after theirs passes away.  After several failed attempts, the two stumble upon a deaf-mute woman with green hair who they deem as perfect for the job.  The young woman seems to agree and follows them home where she commences to clean and decorate their junky house and feed them wonderful meals.  As is typical of the male persuasion, Mr. Maio (pronounced me-ow, like a cat purring) and his son can’t help but look this gift horse in the mouth, creating a tragedy with a twist.  The comedy ranges from light and engaging to irritating, but Mangano is simply gorgeous, even with green hair.  This is as close as the film comes to genuine witchery.

The fourth installment, directed by Franco Rossi and entitled “The Sicilian Woman,” is about a young lady who manipulates her father into killing a suitor he believes insulted his daughter, only to set off an entire series of revenge killings.

And finally, Vittorio De Sica’s “An Evening Like Any Other,” is perhaps the most notorious story of the entire bunch.  It sees Clint Eastwood playing a disenchanted husband who has lost interest in his marriage.  Mangano tries to coax him into bed between fantasies of him lavishing affection on her.  These fantasies also include comic book characters like Batman (here in a different superhero scheme likely due to copyright problems), Mandrake the Magician, Flash Gordon, and Diabolik.  The notoriety comes from the infamous tale of what Eastwood took as partial payment for his involvement in the film as well as the fact that it never really saw the light of day in America thanks to MGM burying it in favor of promoting Eastwood’s Leone trilogy and Hang ‘Em High.  In Italy, Eastwood was played up in the film but I guess MGM was concerned the decidedly unmanly image presented by Eastwood in The Witches might harm his macho turn as The Man with No Name.

The film is a unique slice of late-60’s Italian cinema and won’t be suited to everyone’s tastes.  I enjoyed the film from an historical perspective though it was a bit uneven from one segment to another.  I particularly enjoyed the two bookends to the film, Visconti’s and De Sica’s segments, while Pasolini’s segment was…interesting.  In the end, The Witches remains a strange bit of Italian cinema little-seen by American viewers but perhaps worth a look for those brave enough to try something different.

Arrow Academy has released this Blu-ray disc with some nice extras.  The brand new 2K restoration is the best the film has looked since its extremely limited release in 1969 in the U.S.  Previously only available as an on-demand DVD-R, this new restoration is lush and gorgeous.  While the film is presented in its original Italian mono soundtrack (English subs are available), Arrow has included the English language soundtrack for the Clint Eastwood episode, using his own voice.  There is also an interview with Ninetto Davoli and a superb audio commentary with Tim Lucas, of Video Watchdog fame.  His knowledge of film is encyclopedic and well-rounded and he does a very good job of enlightening the viewers about various aspects of the film.

The Witches has just been released by Arrow Academy.  You can purchase the film at Amazon or directly from Arrow Video at http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/category/usa/.