Madonna of the Seven Moons

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.

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!!

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

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.

Reportedly one of the most successful films of its year in Britain, this 1945 Gainsborough production obviously provided high escapism for its war-time audience.

The plot revolves around Phyllis Calvert's Maddalena who we first see as a young convent-girl chased and we are left to assume attacked and raped by her pursuer. Brought up to adulthood in the convent in a very opulent-looking between-the-wars Italy, without any consultation she is unwillingly married off by her absent father to a wealthy Italian gentleman who provides her with doting attention, a lavish lifestyle and then a free-spirited daughter. Despite this "arranged marriage" she, her husband and daughter all seem genuinely happy, so why does she go missing for months at a time before returning to the fold with apparently no recollection of where she's just been?

The answer we're given is that her trauma has forced her to create for herself a second personality as Rosanna, a confident, sexy, gypsy girl who has beguiled the leader of a band of brigands, a dusky, tousle-haired Stewart Granger. However, every time she encounters a stressful situation in either persona, she reverts to the other with no memory of her previous actions. It's her daughter, Patricia Roc who decides to solve the mystery of her mother's disappearances with her only clue being a brooch bearing a design of the Madonna of the Seven Moons which leads her to the the shady part of town where Granger and his gang coincidentally are planning a robbery at Maddalena's own house the night of a grand ball there and so the scene is set for the Maddalena / Rosanna secret to finally be revealed as the movie hurtles towards its tragic conclusion.

It's a strange movie. For the first half-hour everything's very hoity-toity and upper-class and you're wondering where the dreary story is going and then it's as if someone's thrown a box of fireworks at a funeral as the story gues berserk through to the end.

The legend at the beginning defiantly and proudly asserts that Maddalena's story is based on real-life cases, which of course we know nowadays to be true, but there's no explanation given as to why she goes from docile society hostess to the wanton partner of a scurrilous bandit. I'd certainly have preferred if the story hadn't felt the need to fly up into the stratosphere of heightened melodrama where it ended up.

Its difficult to rate the performances of the actors. Calvert is certainly better playing the lady than the tramp and Granger, who hated the picture apparently, struts his dusky stuff all over the place.

I didn't hate the movie myself and it was competently directed by first-timer Arthur Crabtree but really it teetered and fell over on its own pretentions almost the second the plot twist of Maddalana's identities was revealed.