Such a frustrating disappointment

Just perfect...

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I love foreign films...for the most part. They give a viewer an insight into other countries and film styles from around the world. That exposure reveals how various directors in the U.S. have altered their styles from the things they've learned abroad. At the same time it can show how foreign directors have been influenced by American directors. But not always.In some cases there are directors who march to their own drum, creating their own unique and singular style. Those directors are most often hailed as creative geniuses whose artistic expression exceeds the limits place on them by the art form they have chosen. I'd love to be included among those who feel this way but unfortunately I'm not. I see film as a combination of art and commodity, an entertainment for all. Art for the benefit of one doesn't impress me. But that's just my opinion.I'd never heard of THE WITCHES before it was being released to blu-ray by Arrow. I was familiar with its producer, Dino De Laurentiis. I'd heard of several of the directors involved including Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasolini. But I'd never had access to seeing features directed by them which has always bothered me. Watching what they've delivered here hasn't stopped me from wanting to see their works but I wouldn't base my interests on this offering.The film is composed of 5 segments, one for each director and all starring Silvana Mangano. Mangano was the wife of producer De Laurentiis at the time and while she was recognized as a star one has to assume he produced this film in the hopes of furthering her career. Other than the fact she is featured in all 5 there is no connecting theme here that I could make out.In the first segment she's featured as a reclusive movie star/model who's run off to her friend's ski villa. There she's met with awe by her friend's social circle, the women who choose to pick at her frailties and the men who all want to bed her for the night. She moans, she feints, she over dramatizes her life and then moves on. The piece comes off as a reflection on fame and the down side of it, never offering a standard story with beginning, middle and end. Well shot and acted the worst part of this is the fact as the lengthiest story here it goes nowhere and tells us nothing.Our next offering has Mangano as a woman driving her car and being held up by an accident on the road. She volunteers to take the injured man to the hospital and the majority of this segment is little more than her driving recklessly to the point of potentially doing more damage to the man than he already received. The end can be seen coming miles in advance and therefore loses any surprise or humor that one would expect. This piece felt like a comedic effort that just goes a little too long. It is also the best piece offered.Third up is the weirdest of the bunch. Told in excruciatingly surrealistic style it tells the story of a man whose wife has died leaving him with their grown son and no one to look after them. He meets a woman who is mute, runs off and marries her and then brings her home to a shack they live in. Longing for a better home he convinces her to fake a suicide threat in hopes people will give them money to prevent it from happening. The end result isn't what anyone expected. From the extreme colors chosen for people's hair, clothing and homes this looks like an episode of Pee Wee's Playhouse. The acting is also over the top, a combination of pantomime and spoken word. The end result is one of those what have I just watched style films.Fourth is another somewhat entertaining piece that has a woman manipulating her father. First she refuses to tell him what her problem is only to then tell him a man made an inappropriate pass at her. In return he seeks revenge by killing the man responsible which sets into motion a chain of killings all done in revenge of the previous killing. The piece is short and to the point but offers little.Lastly is the story of a woman who feels that her marriage has fallen flat, the excitement gone from their lives. He goes to work, comes home and ignores her while she's done all she can to please him. As the segment unfolds she imagines him in various scenarios in the same location, showing her the affection and attention she craves while their reality is far from it. As with all the stories it ends nowhere, nothing advanced or changed. This segment is notable for the casting of Clint Eastwood in the role of the husband. By this time he was a star in Italy having made his first two spaghetti westerns the 2 years before. Watching him here is painful at times, especially when a segment calls for his interpretation of Fred Astaire like moves.On the whole while the movie was interesting to watch from a historical perspective it lacked anything I would call entertaining. It is a case of style over substance, where the directors were more concerned with showing off how different they were than the mainstream, how artistic they could be and little more. As I said I'm a fan of foreign film but not of movies that purport to enlighten me or to show off how artistic they can be at the expense of entertainment. Others may enjoy films of that sort but for me and most they tend to be ones to pass by.For those fans, the ones who enjoy works like this, Arrow has come through again with a version that will be a must to those fans collections. To start with they're offering a 2k restoration of the film done exclusively for this release. Extras also include a new commentary track by film critic and novelist Tim Lucas, an interview with Ninetto Davoli, an English language version of the segment featuring Eastwood, a reversible sleeve with new artwork by Graham Humphreys and for the first pressing only an illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by Pasquale Iannone and Kat Ellinger. No matter what the film no one can say that Arrow short changes fans and their customers. Their product remains some of the best there is available.

I was severely disappointed upon finding out that this movie wasn't an anthology film themed around witches, but instead the segments don't have a clear connecting point other than the fact that each of them stars Silvana Mangano.The animated intro is my favorite part of the movie. It's creative, somewhat humorous and has a fantastic score playing in the background. However, it's completely misleading (same as the title), as it foreshadows a plot centered about witches.The first story (The Witch Burned Alive, dir. Visconti) is weak, boring and way too long. It's the longest segment and takes up a third of the movie's runtime. The story isn't all that interesting either.The second one (Civic Sense, dir. Bolognini) is easily the worst of all. It's a pointless story about a woman offering to take an injured man to the hospital. The punchline isn't really clever, the direction bland, and the story is surprisingly dull for lasting only four minutes.The third segment (The Earth as Seen from the Moon, dir. Pasolini) is the second worst. I'll give it credit for Totò's fun performance, but sadly everyone else is annoying in their role. The musical track that keeps playing gets aggravating quickly and the plot makes no sense whatsoever. The message of the story is clear only to Pasolini, and probably not even to him.The fourth story (The Girl From Sicily, dir. Rossi) has some potential, but lasts only four minutes and is over before it starts. It isn't given much time, which is shame because the plot is better than the first three story lines.The final story (An Evening Like The Others, dir. De Sica) is by far the best. Because of the plot and style, it's somewhat similar to Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits. Both Mangano and Eastwood are fun to watch and there are some clever shots and sequences, mostly the ones set in the wife's dream world. In the scene where she criticizes the comic books her son reads, you can see an issue of the comic book "Kriminal", about which I agree with her because that comic is horrible.All in all, there's no reason why this movie's premise shouldn't have been set around the actual witches.

On a sleepless night, in my late childhood I was struck by this bizarre movie, in a late-late hours rerun. It blew my mind, and I still wonder around video rentals looking for a copy, in vain. It was conceived probably as a showcase for Silvia Mangano but it is only natural that with such talented directors the movie is not about her, it is instead about them. The first and last episodes are a charming display of misogyny, being the first the silent vivisection of a woman while in the later, featuring a almost speechless Clint Stewood, a cathartic (or rather hysterical) woman lists verborhagically the common places of women paradoxes. But it is Pasollini's "Earth seen from the moon" piece that really breaks through, depicting the perfect woman - half blond, half brunet and entirely mute. His is a little fable on women leading men into idiocy, condition incarnated by famous slapstick comedian Totó. The shortest episode, "Senso Civico" is completely superfluous and echoes another superfluous over-excited-Italian-freak-in-the-traffic episode played by Roberto Begnini in Jim Jarmush's "Night on earth". Still the best pick if you want to trade insomnia for fun.

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.