The Witches | |
---|---|
Italian | Le streghe |
Directed by | Luchino Visconti Mauro Bolognini Pier Paolo Pasolini Franco Rossi Vittorio De Sica |
Screenplay by | Giuseppe Patroni Griffi Cesare Zavattini Age & Scarpelli Bernardino Zapponi Pier Paolo Pasolini Fabio Carpi Enzo Muzzi |
Produced by | Dino De Laurentiis |
Starring | Silvana Mangano Clint Eastwood Annie Girardot Totò Alberto Sordi |
Cinematography | Giuseppe Rotunno |
Edited by | Mario Serandrei Nino Baragli Giorgio Serrallonga Adriana Novelli |
Music by | Piero Piccioni Ennio Morricone |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Dear Film (Italy) United Artists (international) |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 110 minutes |
Countries | Italy France |
Language | Italian |
The Witches (Italian : Le streghe) is a 1967 commedia all'italiana anthology film produced by Dino De Laurentiis in 1965. [1] It consists of five comic stories about witches, directed by Luchino Visconti, Franco Rossi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mauro Bolognini and Vittorio De Sica. The film features Silvana Mangano; Clint Eastwood appears in the final story. [2] It was the last film starring Totò to be released in his lifetime.
A famous actress arrives in an Austrian chalet to spend an evening with friends. The woman is gotten drunk by the guests, and when she falls unconscious, friends remove her makeup to look at the imperfections of her face, always believed beautiful by her fans.
A man is wounded in a traffic accident. A woman stops the car and offers to take him to the hospital. The woman, however, only does this to pass the road traffic. When she arrives at her destination, she throws him out.
This comic episode, directed by Pasolini, tells the story of a red-headed father and son, Ciancicato and Baciu Miao (Totò and Ninetto Davoli). Ciancicato has just lost his wife and wants to marry again. Ciancicato finds a deaf girl among the shacks on the outskirts of Rome and makes her his bride. To buy a better house nearby, he concocts a plan for her to threaten to commit suicide (distraught by her sick children) by jumping from the Colosseum, and take a collection to save her, but she slips on a banana peel and falls, and is buried next to his former wife. Soon after, she reappears at their home and their happy life continues. The story ends with the moral: "Being dead or alive is the same thing."
In this short episode, a Sicilian woman tells her father a man made a pass at her; he retaliates by massacring the family.
Clint Eastwood plays a husband to Silvana Mangano. The short centers on Mangano's feeling that she is unappreciated in her marriage. Scenes alternate between real-life and fantasy. In real life, Mangano expresses her feelings to an Eastwood in subdued ways with hints, and leading questions. In the fantasy sequences she expresses her frustrations dramatically, by yelling, striking, and shooting Eastwood. In the final fantasy sequence, she imagines herself as a glamorous star, walking along in an evolving series of haute couture while being ogled by a growing crowd of middle-aged businessmen. She performs a strip tease for them, which causes the fantasy-Eastwood to kill himself. We return to real-life, Mangano smiles, removes her glasses and goes to sleep, next to a snoring Eastwood.
Luchino Visconti | Director |
Giuseppe Patroni Griffi With the collaboration of Cesare Zavattini | Story and Screenplay |
Piero Piccioni | Composer |
Rinaldo Ricci | Assistant Director |
Mario Serandrei | Editor |
Mauro Bolognini | Director |
Age & Scarpelli Bernardino Zapponi | Story and Screenplay |
Piero Piccioni | Composer |
Massimo Castellani | Assistant Director |
Nino Baragli | Editor |
Pier Paolo Pasolini | Director |
Story and Screenplay | |
Ennio Morricone | Composer |
Sergio Citti | Assistant Director |
Nino Baragli | Editor |
Franco Rossi | Director |
Age & Scarpelli Bernardino Zapponi | Story and Screenplay |
Piero Piccioni | Composer |
Nello Vanin | Assistant Director |
Giorgio Serralonga | Editor |
Vittorio De Sica | Director |
Cesare Zavattini With the collaboration of Fabio Carpi Enzo Muzii | Story and Screenplay |
Piero Piccioni | Composer |
Luisa Alessandri | Assistant Director |
Adriana Novelli | Editor |
Giuseppe Rotunno | Director of Photography |
Alfredo De Laurentiis | General Production Manager |
Mario Garbuglia Piero Poletto | Art Directors |
Piero Tosi | Costume Designer |
Goffredo Rocchetti | Makeup Artist |
Le streghe was never released outside of Europe as United Artists bought the film when Clint Eastwood's career began to ascend. United Artists decided not to release it in theaters but instead kept it in its library vault to prevent its viewing. [3]
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, billed on-screen as Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom on English-language prints and commonly referred to as simply Salò, is a 1975 political art horror film directed and co-written by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The film is a loose adaptation of the 1785 novel The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade, updating the story's setting to the World War II era. It was Pasolini's final film, released three weeks after his murder.
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist and a political figure. He is known for directing the movies from Trilogy of Life.
Silvana Mangano was an Italian film actress. She was one of a generation of thespians who arose from the neorealist movement, and went on to become a major female star, regarded as a sex symbol for the 1950s and '60s. She won the David di Donatello for Best Actress three times – for The Verona Trial (1963), The Witches (1967), and The Scientific Cardplayer (1972) – and the Nastro d'Argento for Best Actress twice.
Laura Betti was an Italian actress known particularly for her work with directors Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci. She had a long friendship with Pasolini and made a documentary about him in 2001.
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Mauro Bolognini was an Italian film and stage director.
Two Mules for Sister Sara is a 1970 American-Mexican Western film in Panavision directed by Don Siegel and starring Shirley MacLaine and Clint Eastwood set during the French intervention in Mexico (1861–1867). The film was to have been the first in a five-year exclusive association between Universal Pictures and Sanen Productions of Mexico. It was the second of five collaborations between Siegel and Eastwood, following Coogan's Bluff (1968). The collaboration continued with The Beguiled and Dirty Harry and finally Escape from Alcatraz (1979).
Arabian Nights is a 1974 Italian film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Its original Italian title is Il fiore delle mille e una notte, which means The Flower of the One Thousand and One Nights.
Teresa Ann Savoy, FRSA was a British actress who appeared in a number of Italian films.
The Decameron is a 1971 anthology film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, based on the 14th-century allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio. It is the first film of Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, the others being The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights. Each film was an adaptation of a different piece of classical literature focusing on ribald and often irreligious themes. The tales contain abundant nudity, sex, slapstick and scatological humour.
Giovanni "Ninetto" Davoli is an Italian actor who appeared in several of Pier Paolo Pasolini's films.
Furio Scarpelli, also called Scarpelli, was an Italian screenwriter, famous for his collaboration on numerous commedia all'italiana films with Agenore Incrocci, forming the duo Age & Scarpelli.
Oedipus Rex is a 1967 Italian film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini adapted the screenplay from the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex written by Sophocles in 428 BC. The film was mainly shot in Morocco. It was presented in competition at the 28th Venice International Film Festival. It was Pasolini's first feature-length color film, but followed his use of color in "The Earth Seen from the Moon" episode in the portmanteau film The Witches (1967).
The Scientific Cardplayer, also known as The Scopone Game, is a 1972 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Luigi Comencini. The screenplay was written by Rodolfo Sonego. In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."
Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia or A Crazy, Crazy, Crazy Race in Russia is a 1974 Soviet-Italian comedy film directed by Eldar Ryazanov and Franco Prosperi. The plot is about a group of Italian treasure hunters who set on a journey to find long-forgotten treasure in Leningrad.
Claudia Moroni, known as Claudia Mori, is an Italian producer, former actress and former singer.
A Day in Court is a 1954 Italian comedy film directed by Steno and starring Peppino De Filippo, Silvana Pampanini, Sophia Loren, and Alberto Sordi. The film is an anthology, consisting of a day's cases before Judge Salomone Lo Russo in a court in Rome.
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Re: Pasolini is a double album by Italian jazz pianist Stefano Battaglia, recorded in 2005 and released on ECM in 2007, and is dedicated to the figure of filmmaker and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini. The cover artwork features a still from the film The Gospel According to Matthew (1964), considered one of his masterworks.