| The Witches | |
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 Italian theatrical release poster | |
| Italian | Le streghe |
| Directed by | |
| Written by | |
| Produced by | Dino De Laurentiis |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Giuseppe Rotunno |
| Edited by |
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| Music by | |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 110 minutes |
| Countries |
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| Language | Italian |
The Witches (Italian:Le streghe) is a 1967commedia all'italianaanthology film produced byDino De Laurentiis in 1965.[1] It consists of five comic stories dealing with the roles of women in Italian society, directed byLuchino Visconti,Mauro Bolognini,Pier Paolo Pasolini,Franco Rossi andVittorio De Sica. The film starsSilvana Mangano and featuresClint Eastwood,Annie Girardot,Totò andAlberto Sordi.[2] It was the last film starring Totò to be released in his lifetime.
Gloria, a famous actress, attends the 10th anniversary party of her friend Valeria and her unfaithful husband Paolo at the couple's home inKitzbühel, Austria. Envied by the women and pursued by the men, including Paolo, Gloria passes out from drinking while performing a dance for the guests. Feigning concern, the female guests remove her headdress and false eyelashes while making catty remarks about her imperfections. Later, Gloria discovers that she is pregnant and telephones her husband/manager in New York, who does not support her desire to take a break from acting to have children, leading to an argument. She leaves nonchalantly the next day, besieged by paparazzi as she boards a helicopter.
Stuck in a traffic jam in Rome, a woman offers to drive a man injured in a car accident to the hospital. However, as the woman speeds through the city, passing various hospitals, she ultimately drops the man off in the middle of the street when she arrives at her destination, having merely used him to get where she was going more quickly.
A recent widower, Ciancicato Miao, and his orange-haired son, Baciù, wander the outskirts of Rome in search of the ideal woman to be the father's new wife and the son's new stepmother. After searching for a year, the two eventually stumble upon Assurdina Caì, a green-haired deaf-mute, and Ciancicato soon marries her. Ciancicato and Baciù take Assurdina to their house, a run-down shack, which she quickly transforms into a colourful, welcoming home.
To earn money to buy a larger house nearby, Ciancicato devises a scheme in which Assurdina fakes a suicide attempt by jumping from theColosseum. A crowd gathers under the Colosseum and begins to take up a collection to save Assurdina, but she slips on a banana peel discarded by a couple of tourists and falls to her death, and is buried next to Ciancicato's late wife. When Assurdina returns as a ghost soon afterwards, Ciancicato and Baciù run away in fear, but after realising that she can still cook, clean and go to bed with Ciancicato, the two men rejoice. The story ends with the moral: "Being dead or alive is the same thing."
In a Sicilian village, a young woman named Nunzia tells her father that a man made an unwanted advance towards her. To avenge his daughter's honour, the father murders the man, only to trigger a feud between the two families that results in the revenge killings of Nunzia's male relatives, including her father, brother, cousin and uncle. Nunzia wails at the funeral, wondering how this bloodshed could have happened.
Frustrated housewife Giovanna is deeply dissatisfied with her ten-year marriage to Carlo, an American banker who is too preoccupied with work and does not appreciate or desire her like he once did. One evening at home, Giovanna indulges in a series of fantasy sequences in which she angrily expresses her frustrations, compels a desperate Carlo to compete for her affections with comic book characters (includingMandrake,Batman,Diabolik andFlash Gordon), shoots at him while donning a black vinyl dress and a spiked headdress, and angers him by revealing her many extramarital affairs.
In the final fantasy sequence, Giovanna imagines herself as a glamorous star, strutting down the street in an evolving series ofhaute couture and attracting a growing crowd of aroused businessmen while Carlo desperately calls out to her. She ultimately leads her male admirers to a massive arena in Rome, where she performs a striptease for the excited crowd, prompting Carlo to shoot himself in the head. Back in reality, Giovanna goes to sleep next to a snoring Carlo and whispers that she loves him.
"The Witch Burned Alive"
"Civic Spirit"
"The Earth Seen from the Moon"
| "The Sicilian Belle"
"An Evening Like the Others"
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"The Witch Burned Alive"
| Director | Luchino Visconti |
|---|---|
| Story and screenplay | Giuseppe Patroni Griffi With the collaboration of Cesare Zavattini |
| Composer | Piero Piccioni |
| Assistant director | Rinaldo Ricci |
| Editor | Mario Serandrei |
"Civic Spirit"
| Director | Mauro Bolognini |
|---|---|
| Story and screenplay | Age & Scarpelli Bernardino Zapponi |
| Composer | Piero Piccioni |
| Assistant director | Massimo Castellani |
| Editor | Nino Baragli |
"The Earth Seen from the Moon"
| Director | Pier Paolo Pasolini |
|---|---|
| Story and screenplay | |
| Composer | Ennio Morricone |
| Assistant director | Sergio Citti |
| Editor | Nino Baragli |
"The Sicilian Belle"
| Director | Franco Rossi |
|---|---|
| Story and screenplay | Age & Scarpelli Bernardino Zapponi |
| Composer | Piero Piccioni |
| Assistant director | Nello Vanin |
| Editor | Giorgio Serralonga |
"An Evening Like the Others"
| Director | Vittorio De Sica |
|---|---|
| Story and screenplay | Cesare Zavattini With the collaboration of Fabio Carpi Enzo Muzii (credited as Enzo Muzzi) |
| Composer | Piero Piccioni |
| Assistant director | Luisa Alessandri |
| Editor | Adriana Novelli |
The Witches was never released outside of Europe asUnited Artists bought the film whenClint Eastwood's career began to ascend. United Artists decided not to release it in theaters and instead kept it in its library vault to protect Eastwood's image.[3] The film was eventually given alimited release in New York City on 12 March 1969 byLopert Pictures Corporation.[4][5]Arrow Academy released a2K restoration of the film on Blu-ray on 30 January 2018.[6][7]
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