Clint Eastwood and Silvana Mangano in “Le streghe” (ENG: “The Witches”), a 1967 Italian anthology film consisting of five comic stories, directed by Luchino Visconti, Franco Rossi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mauro Bolognini and Vittorio De Sica. Each story is about witches and features different actors, except for Mangano who stars in all segments.

Film production took place in the period in which Eastwood was often in Italy because he was working with Sergio Leone in his epic ‘dollar trilogy’ Spaghetti Western movies. Perhaps, it is precisely for this reason that the screenwriters chose a particularly ironic role for him: in the last segment of this movie (“An Evening Like the Others”, directed by Vittorio De Sica), he plays the part of a Western movie lover who does not know how to change the flat relationship with his wife, even going as far as to disguise himself as a gunslinger to entertain her

Reportedly, Clint Eastwood was given the choice of taking $25,000 in cash or $20,000 plus a new Ferrari sports car by producer Dino De Laurentiis to play in this movie. He chose the money and the Ferrari (a spectacular 275 GTB), so that his agent wouldn’t be able to get ten percent of the car.

LACMA Art + Film Gala Honoring Clint Eastwood And John Baldessari Presented By Gucci

Focus on outdated lingo and Michel Legrand-scored beach montages and risk missing the inexorable peeling of the values from bourgeoisie and counterculture alike, Eastwood’s Sirkian attention to vivid reds within hollow interiors, the pointed way the protagonist is exposed in all his male dread by a Mephistophelian sauna comrade, and Holden’s abrupt realization, while paying for his girlfriend’s new duds, that he is now playing the Norma Desmond part. (via MUBI)

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