‘The Witches’ or — Deconstructing the Diva?

Dino De Laurentiis produced ‘The Witches’ (1967) as an anthology vehicle for his wife, Silvana Mangano, and it doesn’t get off to the most promising of starts as a very Sixties animated opening credit sequence shows cartoon witches flying around on broomsticks leading us to believe we’re in for some intolerable spooky wackiness or tiresome, grating kitsch. The good news is these titles are somewhat misleading with the concept of witches being only a tenuous linking theme between the five films contained here at best (sorry to disappoint any horror fans) and with the emphasis more on the various roles of women in Italian society… and even THAT’S sometimes tenuous at best, too.

The film opens with ‘The Witched Burned Alive’ directed by Luchino Visconti and it’s the most serious minded of the episodes, focusing as it does on the breakdown of a diva, a diva eventually stripped of her protective armour and crushed by the pressures of fame. So yeah, not exactly the crazy, supernatural shenanigans we might’ve been expecting but, in my opinion, what we get instead is vastly more interesting.

Visconti, with cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno (who ravishingly shot all five of these shorts), films this with his typically immaculate eye, his use of colour and snow-covered landscapes glimpsed through glazed windows possessing a similarly lush look to Douglas Sirk’s. The only problem is the film was taken away from Visconti by Laurentiis before editing resulting in Visconti disowning the finished movie, and you can kinda see why as there are some cuts and transitions here that wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near Luchino’s other work. Ironically this means if you want to understand just how important, and just how masterful, the flow of images usually are in Visconti’s films then it’s this, possibly his least gracefully edited effort, that demonstrates that the most effectively by its absence.

This is followed by the fun but inconsequential short sketch, ‘Civic Spirit’, by Mauro Bolognini about a woman (Mangano) giving the victim of a car accident (Alberto Sordi) a high speed trip to the hospital in her little red car only for it to transpire she has an alternative destination in mind, and, later, there’s another quick episode, Franco Rossi’s ‘The Sicilian Belle’, that’s similarly humourous but plays out more like a quick parody trailer for a rustic neorealist melodrama than anything else.

The final episode is Vittorio De Sica’s highly enjoyable ‘An Evening Like the Others’ where Mangano plays a bored housewife to Clint Eastwood’s lazy husband who attempts rouse her spouse from his sexual inertia by way of a series of elaborate sexual fantasy sequences. It’s colourful, playful and dripping with groovy Sixties design and whilst it could be dismissed as nothing more than Fellini-lite it’s crammed with such colourful exuberance (even her imaginary dogs are colourful!) and playful energy it’s impossible to resist.

But it’s Pasolini’s ‘The Earth Seen From the Moon’, which occupies the middle of the film, that’s the real surprise here with the controversial director serving up a delightfully inventive comedy about a father (Totò) and son (Ninetto Davoli) who, after the death of their wife/mother, set out to look for a new matriarch, one they promptly discover in the form of Mangano’s Absurdity Cai.

Pasolini uses this tale to fully exploit Totò’s famous gift for physical comedy and this combination of humour, a pop-art colour palette, heavily stylised symmetrical framing and dry sense of wit means it’s like watching a mash-up of silent slapstick, Godard, Wes Anderson and Aki Kaurismäki and Pasolini does an excellent job at keeping the creativity and silliness constantly flowing.

There’s a wonderful moment when, after moving into her new home and discovering how filthy the place is, Mangano starts cleaning and getting rid of all the unnecessary clutter her new husband and step son have been hoarding — a human skull, a live hand grenade, a Chinese child — whilst keeping the items representative of domesticity and beauty — a doll, some flowers, a portrait of Charlie Chaplin. It’s very funny (it contains the most hilarious tombstones you’ll ever witness), bright and surprisingly sweet and demonstrates Mangano’s (and Pasolini’s) remarkable comedic control (her facial reaction to pulling out the Chaplin portrait makes me swoon in both admiration and adoration every time I watch it). Quite frankly, I absolutely loved this to bits.

Not everything in ‘The Witches’ works and some of the pieces wouldn’t be missed if they weren’t included but the variety, imagination and style on display, and especially Mangano herself, left me utterly head over heels with both the film and her.

So yeah, almost nothing to do with witches, a bit more about women in society and most definitely a showcase for how stunning and gifted Mangano was, although De Laurentiis should’ve fessed up to his true intention for producing the film and simply called it — ‘Look How Hot and Talented My Wife Is’.