The Witches

Director: Mauro Bolognini, Vittorio De Sica, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Rossi and Luchino Visconti
Year Released: 1966
Rating: 1.0

Dino De Laurentiis produced this vanity project for his wife, Silvana Mangano, dragging five well-known Italian filmmakers in to each make a short film with her. The result is a mixed - and disappointing - affair: the Visconti and De Sica films are empty-headed failures (Visconti's obsession with the zoom lens is back again; De Sica's bit has one good idea that it milks for what feels like a half-hour and wastes Clint Eastwood's role as an unresponsive husband) and the Franco Rossi one might have been good had it not been forty-five completely incoherent seconds long, leaving the Bolognini black-comedy short and the Pasolini absurdist fable (a ridiculous joke that works because it's so charming and un-Pasolini-like) as the compilation's best moments.