In the mid-sixties, famed producer Dino De Laurentiis
brought together the talents of five famed Italian directors for an anthology
film. Their brief was simple: to direct an episode in which Silvana Mangano
(Bitter Rice, Ludwig) plays a witch.
Luchino Visconti (Ossessione, Death in Venice) and
screenwriter Cesare Zavattini (Bicycle Thieves) open the film with The Witch
Burned Alive, about a famous actress and a drunken evening that leads to
unpleasant revelations. Civic Sense is a lightly comic interlude from Mauro
Bolognini (The Lady of the Camelias) with a dark conclusion, and The Earth as
Seen from the Moon sees Italian comedy legend Totò team up with Pier Paolo
Pasolini (Theorem) for the first time for a tale of matrimony and a red-headed
father and son.
Franco Rosso (The Woman in the Painting) concocts a story of
revenge in The Sicilian’s Wife, while Vittorio De Sica (Shoeshine) casts Clint
Eastwood as Mangano’s estranged husband in An Evening like the others,
concluding The Witches with a stunning homage to Italian comic books.
According to Michael Munn in his 1992 book, Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's
Loner ‘Le Streghe was never released outside of Europe as United Artists bought
the film when Clint Eastwood's career began to take off. United Artists decided
not to release it in theatres but instead kept it in their library vault to
prevent its viewing’.
I've never believed that to be necessarily true, as I always
come back to the same question. Why did United Artists have a 1 sheet
poster produced if their only intention was to bury the film? I think
United Artists did release The Witches, around 1969 and only after Eastwood had
established himself through the success of the Dollar trilogy and once Hang em high
had been released. The Witches remains a very strange movie, there's no doubt about it. It’s
very eclectic and very arthouse in its style. But it's also a fabulous chance
of obtaining this Eastwood oddity, which in some ways is quite amusing looking back at it now.
Arrow has done a fabulous job on the presentation. Picture
detail is very nice, especially in comparison to the MGM/UA manufactured on
demand DVD-R, which was the only other previous way of obtaining this movie. For
starters, there’s a brand new 2K restoration from original film elements
produced by Arrow Films and exclusively for this release. Audio is presented in
its original Italian mono (uncompressed LPCM). Bonus material includes a brand-new
audio commentary by film critic and novelist Tim Lucas. The complete
English-language version of The Witches, on home video for the first time in
any format, presented in High Definition and with optional English subtitles for
the deaf and hard-of-hearing And, in line with Arrow’s usual policy, there’s a
reversible sleeve option featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by
Graham Humphreys. I hasten to add, despite a rather nice example of ‘new’ artwork;
mine has already been reversed to display the original U.S. pink artwork. For its
first run, there is also a 32 page illustrated collector’s booklet featuring
new writing on the film by Pasquale Iannone and Kat Ellinger. There is also a
postcard featuring the U.S. poster artwork.
Well worth grabbing and adding to your collection,
especially for completest reasons.
Region Code: B, Running Time: 121 mins, Number of Discs: 1,
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1, Colour
Check it out at Arrow here
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