La Sorciere

La Sorciere, billed as "a story of un-inhibited love," for adults only, is casting eerie shadows at the Trans-Lux this week. It blends fantasy, romance, comedy, suspense and tragedy in one colorful melange.

Young M. Brouland finds road-building in Northern Sweden more than he expected: His sharp-tongued female boss falls in love with him, only to lose him to la sorciere.

For Ina is no ordinary work-a-night witch. Flowing flaxen tresses, bare feet, bare arms, and nearly bare breasts contained with difficulties by a tattered homespun give this young enchantress a special magic of her own. The prudish townswomen's resentment of the mysterious forest-girl drives them to nail up strangled birds to ward off her heathen charms.

Stumbling into quicksand, the hero is on the point of disappearing when he is saved by Maila, Ina's kindly sorceress-grandmother. His former friends ostracize him for wanting to marry Ina--who, loving him, cannot marry because she fears churches. And so on, until our sprite meets a tragic end, dying on the forest floor under a full moon; and only the owls answer her lover's frantic calls.

The other offering, an Italian film, Three Forbidden Tales, tells the usual Poignant stories of rape, unrequited and misdirected love, shattered pride, sex, and death in fairly nauseating fashion.

As la sorciere, Marina Vlady has few lines to say, but looks bewitching as she says them. Her grace and gentleness are touching; but these are almost obscured by a film which generally tastes like a tenderized Jungle Princess story, with soupcons of old Salem days stirred in the cauldron.