Exclusive: Rare Clint Eastwood footage (1966's "Le Streghe" / "The Witches") finds its way to YouTube

I've just been alerted that two lengthy clips from a barely known 1966 Italian art-house film starring Clint Eastwood have been up on YouTube for over a year, and no one's noticed! The film, called "Le Streghe" ("The Witches"), was produced by Dino De Laurentiis and starred his wife, Silvana Mangano. It's  comprised of five vignettes by five directors; one of the vignettes -- "Civic Sense" -- stars Eastwood playing an uncharacteristic role as the everyman husband of Mangano.  The YouTube blurb describes it  as a "light comedy," but it's actually more surrealist and Fellini-esque -- and is quite saucy in parts (at one point Eastwood tells Mangano, "I want to swallow you"). 

The film had a limited U.S. release (four years after it was made, it says here) and is not available on DVD. In fact, according to a tipster, until recently all known copies of "The Witches" were thought to be lost.  Universal apparently owned some or all of the U.S. rights to the film, but it's not clear if they still do.

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[B.]

Produced in 1967, THE WITCHES was released in the United States in 1969 by Lopert Pictures, a subsidiary of United Artists. [UA distributed the movie in much of the world.] It is a little obscure, but it has certainly never been lost -- THE WITCHES has aired occasionally on cable over the past two decades, and UA still holds domestic rights. Eastwood appears in the strange comic segment directed by Vittorio de Sica, but the film is better remembered for the effective segments directed by Pasolini and Visconti -- Visconti later used Silvana Mangano in his film of DEATH IN VENICE.

[Chris Desjardins]

The American Cinematheque is screening THE WITCHES (LE STREGHE) on the second half of a double bill with Jerzy Skolimowski's DEEP END on Thursday August 14 at the Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood during their annual Fantasy, Horror and Science-Fiction series.