Hexen von heute

I once caught 15 minutes on Italian tv of Pasolini's contribution and was completely fascinated by it. Having now also seen his film "Uccellacci e uccellini," made the same year as "Le Streghe" and in much the same absurdist style, I understand even more fully the political commentary being made in both films. The social and political commentary in Pasolini's work is delivered obliquely and with great humor but is nonetheless vital to an understanding of both the style and content of his films. Even after having lived in Italy for some time, speaking the language fluently and learning as much as I could about the complicated political events of the fifties, sixties and seventies, I am aware that as a foreigner I am still at a disadvantage to fully "getting" the point that's being made in these two films. I would think it would be nearly impossible to find them anything other than strange and disconnected without some familiarity with the Italian political milieu of that period. However, that said, I think the beauty of the stylization - successfully realized and united on every level, design, costumes, cinematography and most particularly, acting - works irregardless and is entertaining in and of itself. It's especially interesting to see a comic performer as beloved and mainstream as Toto was at that time, so willingly and completely giving himself over to a director as completely experimental and also so controversial in an extremely volatile political climate as was Pasolini. My only negative comment about "Le streghe" is that I wish it weren't so impossible to get hold of as I would love to see this very beautiful film in its entirety.

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.

These five shorts have an undeniable breezy quality, commenting on the freewheeling Italian lifestyle of the swingin' sixties and also offering some timeless "period" storytelling. The favorite is "The Witch Burned Alive". Visconti's work is redolent of Fellini's "Juliet of the Spirits"' upper class shenanigans, with the celebrity angle making Woody Allen's comments nearly half a century later seem, well, tired and inferior. Silvana Mangano appears a bit, well, exhausted in this film and others of the series, like Chrisitna Applegate on a bad day, but the costuming and Kitzbuehl apres ski setting in a chalet make Visconti's short irresistible. The Pasolini work is charming in a semi-dada-esque way, especially with the knowledge that the young male pimply faced "actor' may well have been really a boy toy from the streets of Roma. The story has a punk rock feel that rings with folkloric quirkiness and white magic.

"Civic Spirit" is the most emblematic of the five, very au courant of the era, using an injured man as an excuse to barrel through Rome traffic at top speed under the guise of being hospital bound, while the driving beauty is really just using the poor hapless man as a shill to get to a rendezvous on time-- very cute, and Silvana looks fabulous once again, as she rushes to meet her playboy date. This film is on cable on occasion late at night and worth sitting through for the afficionado of these fine directors. Brava to Silvana, an actress largely forgotten in the pantheon of stars of international merit. Two pinkies held semi-high.

Rather zany, 'The Witches' entertains sufficiently.

Anthology films aren't usually my thing but I found the oddness of this production to be worth watching. It somehow works. There are five stories portrayed, all of which have their moments even if some are definitively better than others. The music is good, also.

"The Witch Burned Alive", the opener, is the standout, "Civic Spirit" is amusingly short, "The Earth Seen from the Moon" is one of the weaker entries as it drags a little, "The Sicilian Belle" is a little forgettable and, the finale, "An Evening Like the Others" is the most strange but does satisfy due to its unusualness and comical nature.

That last one's weirdness is elevated by the appearance of Clint Eastwood - which is made even more peculiar as he doesn't even voice his character due to the Italian language barrier; Giuseppe Rinaldi provides the voice, fwiw. It is bizarre yet, again, does work.

The star of this 1967 release, though, is Silvana Mangano, who leads all five stories. She is excellent across them all, this is my first exposure to her and I'm intrigued to potentially see more of her work in the future.

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.