Le streghe

Plot synopsis:
During a holiday with his grandmother Helga (Mai Zetterling) in Norway, Luke Eveshim (Jasen Fisher) is told stories about "real" witches, female demons with a genocidal hatred for children, all of whom emit an odor obnoxious to witches. Helga tells him that her childhood friend was taken and cursed to spend the rest of her life trapped inside a painting. After Luke's parents are accidentally killed, Helga becomes Luke's legal guardian and they move to England. While building a treehouse, Luke is accosted by a witch, though he sees through her ruse and avoids his potential death, hiding at the top of the tree. On Luke's 9th birthday, Helga falls ill with her diabetes. Her doctor advises them to spend the summer by the sea.
They stay at a seaside resort, where Luke meets and befriends a gluttonous but friendly boy, Bruno Jenkins (Charlie Potter), while getting on the bad side of the hotel manager, Mr. Stringer (Rowan Atkinson), after his pet mice frighten a maid who is having an affair with the manager. Also staying at the hotel are a convention load of witches, masquerading as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, with the Grand High Witch (Anjelica Huston), the leader of the world's witches, attending their annual meeting.
Luke inadvertently discovers the witches while playing with his pet mice inside the ballroom, where the witches hold their meeting. The Grand High Witch unveils her latest weapon: a formula to turn children into mice, which they will use on confectionery products in sweet shops and candy stores to be opened using a money provided by the Grand High Witch. Bruno is lured into the room, having already been given chocolate laced with the formula a couple of hours earlier. He turns into a mouse and flees. Luke attempts to escape but is also captured and turned into a mouse, though he avoids being squashed. He finds Bruno and reunites with Helga who recovered while Luke was adventuring.
Luke devises a plan to kill the witches by sneaking into the Grand High Witch's room to steal a bottle of the formula. Luke manages to drop the bottle into a pot of cress soup destined for the witches' dinner tables. Mr. Jenkins (Bill Paterson) also orders the soup, though Helga stops him from consuming it at the last minute. The formula turns all the witches into mice, just after Bruno speaks up to tell his father that he is really a mouse. The staff and hotel guests join in killing the mice, unknowingly ridding England of its witches. as Helga returns Bruno to his parents. The Grand High Witch is spotted by Helga, who traps her under a water jug, enabling Mr. Stringer to dispatch her with a meat cleaver.
Luke and Helga return to their home, where they are delivered the Grand High Witch's trunk full of money and an address book of all witches in the USA. Luke (who had secretly readdressed the trunk at the resort) suggests that they might use it to eradicate the world's witches once and for all. That night, the Grand High Witch's assistant Miss Irvine (Jane Horrocks), who had quit her job and escaped the massacre, repented and reformed her herself to be a good witch. She pays a visit to the house and uses her power to return Luke to his human body and return his pet mice before leaving to repeat the process with Bruno.

Tags: adult comedy

Review:
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.
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.
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.
Next up, Mangano plays a fiery Sicilian woman who has been wronged.
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.
All but the last film suffer from the dreaded English dubbing, but some amount of entertainment value manages to come through.
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..
I once caught 15 minutes on Italian tv of Pasolini's contribution and was completely fascinated by it.
Having now also seen his film "Uccellacci e uccellini,"  made the same year as "Le Streghe" and in much the same absurdist style, I understand even more fully the political commentary being made in both films.
The social and political commentary in Pasolini's work is delivered obliquely and with great humor but is nonetheless vital to an understanding of both the style and content of his films.
Even after having lived in Italy for some time, speaking the language fluently and learning as much as I could about the complicated political events of the fifties, sixties and seventies, I am aware that as a foreigner I am still at a disadvantage to fully "getting" the point that's being made in these two films.
I would think it would be nearly impossible to find them anything other than strange and disconnected without some familiarity with the Italian political milieu of that period.
However, that said, I think the beauty of the stylization - successfully realized and united on every level, design, costumes, cinematography and most particularly, acting - works irregardless and is entertaining in and of itself.
It's especially interesting to see a comic performer as beloved and mainstream as Toto was at that time, so willingly and completely giving himself over to a director as completely experimental and also so controversial in an extremely volatile political climate as was Pasolini.
My only negative comment about "Le streghe" is that I wish it weren't so impossible to get hold of as I would love to see this very beautiful film in its entirety..
You should definitely see this movie if you like a) 60's clothes, b) 60's movie sets, c) weird movies, d) Silvana Mangano, and e) obscure Clint Eastwood titles (yes, he's in it, too), among other things..
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.
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".
*** out of ****This is basically a collection of five short films all about women and the roles that people feel that they play in society.
It gives us different interpretations of women and how people feel around them.
The first story is about a famous actress who hides away from the public at a ski resort, before discovering that she's pregnant.
It starts out slow, but it becomes pretty haunting to watch after a while.The second story gives us a woman who has an injured man in her car who is supposed to drive him to the hospital, but instead drives by several of them before going to where she wants to go.
Perhaps this is supposed to be a comment on how a woman supports a man in times of need?
The third story is an indescribably weird and chaotic satire of a father and son who look for a woman to be the father's wife and his son's mother.
They come upon a woman who is deaf and are able to get something going with her before the story gets even weirder.
This film actually really made me feel weird and left my mind broken in a million directions, but i couldn't stop watching it no matter how much i tired.The forth is a story about a man who murders several people because of a woman.
This one isn't really funny at all and is actually pretty depressing when you really get right down to it.The fifth story has Clint Eastwood in it as the uninteresting husband of a woman who escapes into an imaginary world where she gets sweet revenge on him for being so boring.My favorite story is the third, simply because it is so strange and unlike anything that it must be seen to be believed.
These five shorts have an undeniable breezy quality, commenting on the freewheeling Italian lifestyle of the swingin' sixties and also offering some timeless "period" storytelling.
Visconti's work is redolent of Fellini's "Juliet of the Spirits"' upper class shenanigans, with the celebrity angle making Woody Allen's comments nearly half a century later seem, well, tired and inferior.
Silvana Mangano appears a bit, well, exhausted in this film and others of the series, like Chrisitna Applegate on a bad day, but the costuming and Kitzbuehl apres ski setting in a chalet make Visconti's short irresistible.
The Pasolini work is charming in a semi-dada-esque way, especially with the knowledge that the young male pimply faced "actor' may well have been really a boy toy from the streets of Roma.
The story has a punk rock feel that rings with folkloric quirkiness and white magic."Civic Spirit" is the most emblematic of the five, very au courant of the era, using an injured man as an excuse to barrel through Rome traffic at top speed under the guise of being hospital bound, while the driving beauty is really just using the poor hapless man as a shill to get to a rendezvous on time-- very cute, and Silvana looks fabulous once again, as she rushes to meet her playboy date.
This film is on cable on occasion late at night and worth sitting through for the afficionado of these fine directors.
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.
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.
The story isn't all that interesting either.The second one (Civic Sense, dir.
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.
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.
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.
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..
This one's a big-named Dog. The last segment, with Mangano and Clint Eastwood, is at least interesting, if only for a look at baby Clint, but ultimately goes nowhere.
Trivia note: in the first segment, filmed in Kitzbuhel, Austria, one of the press photogs is a Kitzbuhel local who was a ski instructor at the time, according to my husband who lived in Kitzbuhel around the same period.
"Oh my darling Absurdity!" - Not much of a film; Mangano's watchable..
This portmanteau film, comprised of 5 short efforts by noted Italian directors, is decidedly unsuccessful.
The best 2 are Luchino Visconti's "The Witch Burned Alive" and "An Evening Like The Others" by Vittorio De Sica, and those are far from excellent, but are quite effective.
The whole thing is dated in quite a negative way, although some of the visuals and music is impressive, particularly that tune in the first segment that Mangano dances to.
What perplexes is the general lack of film-making invention in any of them - any surrealism is mild and far from interesting.
Pasolini's piece is pretty objectionable and bizarre, yet with seemingly no reason to it, with two frankly farcical characters indulging in dull, insubstantial activities.
What this odd but tedious collection of films do all display is an attempt at style-over-substance modish cinema.
The de Sica piece however, has quite a good use of fantasy sequences, using the sensuous Silvana Mangano to the full.
In its favour it can be said to have style - at least in the de Sica and Visconti pieces - and a rather effective array of hair stylings for Mangano, who appeals in all of the pieces.
Mangano makes no impression in the middle 3 segments, perhaps as she's a mute "Absurdity" in Pasolini's, and is a mere catalyst in the other 2.
She's good enough in the bookending pieces though, creating some character, unlike any other performers.
Clint Eastwood is pretty anonymous really, but the last piece does flow well, with inventive, sometimes bizarre sequences of Silvana Mangano's fantasies.
Beware the Pasolini segment...!
The best 25 minutes of Clint Eastwood's career lurk inside this uneven grab bag of shorts by five directors, among them greats.
So good is he in Vittorio De Sica's brilliant segment (as the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit who unleashes his wife's libidinous Walter Middy) that you wonder what would have happened had Eastwood done more comedy.
The rest of the material is mildly charming, middling, dated, watchable only for Silvano Mangano, or, in the case of the Pasolini, dreadful..
Mangano,Totó and Eastwood.
Funny Italian comedy with Mangano in all episodes.but the funniest is with Totó telling some kind nonsense with pit of black humor by pasolini,the last episode come Eastwood in Italian's day making the husband who is now 10 years boring marriage,Silvana Magano is fantastic in every way...Gorgeus!!!.
I understand he theme of the movie is the difference of roles women play but the title is so misleading.
There was only one of the four stories I found funny.
The story with Clint Eastwood was only okay.
The first story was probably the worst and I wanted to quit the movie many times during it.
Some interesting camera every once and while but not worth the watch in my opinion..
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.
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.
I'd heard of several of the directors involved including Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
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.
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.
From the extreme colors chosen for people's hair, clothing and homes this looks like an episode of Pee Wee's Playhouse.
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.
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 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.
No matter what the film no one can say that Arrow short changes fans and their customers.