Madonna der sieben Monde

You're best to go into this one absolutely blind, as any knowledge of the plot will spoil it for you. For the first 15 minutes or so the audience is kept completely in the dark as to what this movie is even about. Gradually a mystery begins to take shape and then the rest of the movie draws us in to see where it leads.

The early scenes have a somewhat over-the-top Gothic quality which could put some viewers right off, but patience pays; the mood changes and the rest of the movie becomes quite intriguing.

Here's a slight hint – readers of romantic novels will definitely enjoy it, but that should not deter anyone else.

In Madonna Of The Seven Moons, young Phyllis Calvert fresh out of the convent is going through the woods and is raped. She got no traditional counseling as we would today so it's messed her head up good.

She's now some 25 years later married to Reginald Tate and has a daughter Patricia Roc. But during the period of the marriage she's taken her own sabbaticals from the marriage and gone and shacked up with gypsy Stewart Granger who heads a gang of thieves. Each time she's welcomed back to the family no questions asked.

Now she's gone and done it again and this time her British diplomat hubby and daughter are searching for her. She's back at her old haunts.

This is one weird and strange film and me just going this far with the plot should tell you as much. The cast can't make much out of this hash of a story though they do their best.

Phyllis Calvert speaks obliquely with Mother Superior Helen Haye about something terrible. We then jump forward in time to a scene in which she and super-wealthy husband John Stuart are awaiting the return of their daughter, Patricia Roc. Things go along swimmingly for a while. Miss Roc wears shorts hangs out with the arty set, and the staid Miss Calvert attempts to bond with her. Then, after about 40 minutes of this, we hear a theremin. Miss Calvert puts a handkerchief over her head and goes to the slums, where she reunites with lover Stewart Granger, with apparently never a memory of her other life. Stuart confesses to Miss Roc that mummy has disappeared before. Miss Roc goes looking for Miss Calvert.

It took me several minutes to realize that this was all set in Florence, such was the posh manner in which everyone spoke and dressed. It's only when a character showed up wearing a biretta that I twigged; such are the conventions of the era that no one seemed to notice that Miss Calvert was only four months older than Miss Roc. Neither is whatever trauma led Miss Calvert to this odd double life ever explained, even though the opening titles insist that there was a real person who went through this.

That said, Arthur Crabtree's first movie as director is typically lush Gainsborough piffle of the era, with the ex-cinematographer supervising Jack Cox's camerawork through several sumptuous sequences. The cast is strong, as it needed to be to put over this nonsense, including Peter Glenville, Dulcie Gray, and Jean Kent.

While the holes in the story -- mandated, no doubt, by the censors --annoy me, there's no doubt that this is fine commercial film-making. Still, it's not a movie I'll be revisiting.

This has got to be one of the most amazing movies I have ever seen. Not a dull moment to be had, and while it's not a thriller, it will certainly keep you on the edge of your seat. And boy are the love scenes steamy or what?? The only possible gripe is that it's extremely hard to believe that Miss Calvert could possibly have a daughter Miss Roc's age, and the casting is made even funnier when one knows the actual age difference between them (about 4 months), and has seen them act together in other movies where they play same-age friends, rather than inventing some non-existent 18 year age gap. Thus said, there truly would be no two women better suited to the roles, and they play their parts splendidly, with Phyllis Calvert expressing the mental anguish of her character's with such calibre that it certainly rivals Vivien Leigh's Blanche du Bois.

A dual personality is the subject of "Madonna of the Seven Moons," a true story. It was released in 1945, starring Phyllis Calvert, Patricia Roc, Peter Glenville, Reginald Tate, and John Stuart.

The story takes place in the early part of the 20th century, when Maddelena, an Italian teen, is attacked while she is walking in the woods.

Maddelena ends up in a convent, and when it's time for her to leave, she doesn't want to. However, she has been betrothed to marry Giuseppe Labardi (Stuart). She gives birth to their daughter Angela over a year later.

Then we flash to the 1940s. Maddelena seems very happy with Labardi and seems well loved and respected. Their daughter Angela (Roc), who is very grown up, modern, and vivacious, is due home from school.

It's then we learn that there is something strange about Maddelena, that she is a troubled woman who a few years back, disappeared from the Labardi home and returned some time later.

Mentally scarred and our story flashes forward to the 1940s where Maddelena is still troubled. She disappears one day and her daughter vows to find her.

Maddelena has another life, that of a gypsy involved with a crook, played by Stewart Granger. It is a passionate and adventurous life. No one at home knows where she has gone, and their only clue is a sketch of something called The Madonna of the Seven Moons, earrings with dangling quarter moons from the base. Angela sets out to find her, with this as her only clue.

It's an okay film from Gainsborough Studios, a melodramatic one that seems overwrought. I will say Stewart Granger is quite handsome with his dark curly hair. Interestingly, Calvert and Roc were the same age although they played mother and daughter.