Madonna of the Seven Moons

I enjoyed this movies more than some of the stuff turning up on our screens today. While some of the acting wasn't brilliant the story line was excellent and the characters were interesting, if not over the top sometimes.

Phyllis Calvert played the the lead very well. Extremely well spoken, something you don't find in movies of late.

Worth a look...

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.

The ego to the id of 'Brief Encounter', this rollicking nonsense described by the Robsons as "typical Italian schizophrenic rubbish" made the hearts of British women race when it originally hit cinemas eighty years today during the final winter of the war.

They thrilled to the exploits of respectable middle class housewife Phyllis Calvert and her wanton alter ego as a curly haired hussy regularly bursting into song and flashing her heels in a succession of low dives to the accompaniment of a gypsy guitar; although it later prompted Stewart Granger to lament "Oh dear, I should never have signed that contract" as in the words of the late David Shipman the film "gets dafter and dafter".

Wonderful!!

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.

I saw this movie when it first came out and have yet to figure out why it was such a popular success. Its surely one of the silliest movies ever made with a a cast of English actors in operatic style Gypsy get-up -

seems everyone wore jangly earing's and swaggered around while Phyllis Calvert (God rest her) one of the most English of actresses portrayed an Italian girl possessed by wayward uncontrollable passions (usually portrayed in those days by the luscious Gina Lollobrigida) Its really a trip through the costume wardrobe of an Italian opera. See it strictly for laughs. It would have only needed the Ritz brothers to appear half way though to get the whole thing together