Witches

About this book

In the mid-sixties, famed producer Dino De Laurentiis brought together the talents of five celebrated Italian directors for an anthology film. Their brief was simple : each filmmaker would create an episode centered on a witch, to be played in all episodes by Silvana Mangano (Bitter Rice, Ludwig). Luchino Visconti (Ossesione, 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 Totõ 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.