Nicolas Roeg

The film was stylistically indebted to Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 existential Western, There Will Be Blood, which was itself inspired by the films of Stanley Kubrick.

Thus, The Witch acts as a clear connector to the earlier auteur horror cycle led by filmmakers like Kubrick, Roman Polanski, William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, and Nicolas Roeg.

The Eggers film not only challenged audiences with 17th century dialogue but also told a story that seemed alien to the modern mind.

The story is vividly rooted in an archaic, remote Puritan worldview that modern audiences found difficult to relate to.

but whatever the reason, Nicolodi was cast as Anne.

Her voice in the English dub, by the way, is provided by the actress Teresa Russell, who made quite a name for herself in the 80s and 90s in the arthouse cinema of her then-husband, Nicholas Roeg.

Arriving at their hotel, the group are met by Inspector Germani and his female sidekick Altieri, who, as I mentioned earlier, act as mirrored versions of Peter and Anne, something that is both a stylistic and also a narrative plot conceit.

The dynamic between Germani and Altieri also allows Argento to further explore the battle of the sexes.

No, I've alwa- I've always liked witches as a concept.

Nicholas Roeg's adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches-

Mm-hmm

... always made a big impression upon me, and I really liked that book as a child, and the Anjelica Huston performance is very fun-

So if you get, like, Suspiria, right? And then also f- '70s, and then Phenomena with Jennifer Connelly, and then Don't Look Now-

Mm-hmm

... was shot in Italy largely, even though it's a Nicholas Roeg movie, '70s.

'70s.

Turns out all the composers [laughs] that I knew were dead except Pino Donaggio, who was in his mid-80s and had retired.

But I was such an admirer of Pino's work from his, obviously his days of Nicholas Roeg or was it Brian De Palma or Dario Argento or the many other amazing, you know, films he's worked on.

I was able to have a lunch with him in Milan, and I said to him, "Pino, how would you like to write an opera?" And he very [laughs] easily said, "Sure." He would love to write an opera.

[laughs] And I said, "Okay, that's great because that's what we're making." I sent him part of the script so he could read a little bit what it was about, and then I would show him, um, the first visuals and the first cuts, and then I would collaborate with him.

Okay, we are recapping the movie The Witches.

It came out in 1990, directed by Nicolas Roeg, written by Allan Scott, based off the children's novel by Roald Dahl, starring Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jason Fisher, Rowan Atkinson, and Bill Paterson.

He has been in so many fucking things.

He's like the definition of a that guy.

That's tall.

And this movie definitely has some, like, fucked up scenes in it for a [laughs] child's movie.

But there are even more, uh, originally that the director, Nicolas Roeg-

She's 5'10"

And you

remember those, like I remember watching Walkabout, Nicholas Roeg film.

I need to see that, yeah.

I just stumbled on it, really hung over at uni on my laptop.

He's not the only one.

Nicholas Roeg, is it? Yeah, Nick

Roeg, and also Nick Roeg, yeah.

And so those sort of films are very, very different to what you might expect in that sort of British tradition.

And I kind of I really appreciate that.

Yeah, well, that's the other thing that echoes through this movie too, which is Don't Look Now, which is Nicholas Roeg's film about Donald Sutherland not being able to interpret things directly in front of him because of the veil of grief that surrounds both himself and his wife.

And, you know, obviously there's a little person in both of those and that's the real...

That kind of landed bad for me too the first time.