Gainsborough Pictures is probably most famous for the wide variety of melodramatic romantic (often costume) dramas it produced in the heydays of the 1940's. MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS (1945) is one of the strangest, kinkiest examples of Gainsborough melodrama, yet it is also, despite it's wild, unbelievable melodrama, quite a finely made film and a very entertaining one at that.
The film concerns the highly implausible premise of a woman, Maddelena (Phyllis Calvert)Labardi, having completely split identities. For long periods she is the married, repressed English lady, complete with clipped vowels and high collars. Her daughter Angela comes home from boarding school, and it is soon revealed that something is not quite right with her mother. She has strange spells of behavior where she appears to be somewhere completely different, reacts badly to Angela's modern dress and spirit, and faints at the sight of Sandro Barucci (Peter Glenville), one of Angela's friends invited for a party. Soon Maddelena becomes Rosanna, a gypsy woman who cavorts in the Florentine underbelly with her dark, handsome, devilish lover Nino Barucci (Stewart Granger).
Calvert's complex character apparently has no idea of her illness, or her "other self" when she is either Maddelena or Rosanna. The only things that trigger awareness are religious symbols, the "seven moons" and set of jewelery. Angela and her fiancé soon venture to Florence to uncover the truth, and it of course ends in tragedy as Calvert's two identities catch up with and threaten one another.
The idea of Phyllis Calvert, refined English leading lady and all, as an amnesiac posing as a free-living Italian gypsy girl is not as ridiculous as you may think. Calvert plays her dual roles very well, quite convincing as both the repressed upper-middle class housewife and the long-haired gypsy, alternately puffing on cigarettes and sexily cavorting with her thief lover Granger.
Granger, who was Gainsborough's second most famous male lead after the great James Mason, does not have to do much else here apart from smolder and play a bit of a rough with Calvert in low-necked, sweaty shirts and carnival costumes. Granger was undoubtedly nowhere near as talented as the brooding, saturnine Mason who he had starred with in the "definitive" Gainsborough costume melodrama THE MAN IN GREY (1943), yet he is a strong screen presence regardless. Lovely Patricia Roc, often the second lead to Calvert or Margaret Lockwood (see THE WICKED LADY), is quite capable as the daughter, though it is a tad hard to buy the "mother-daughter" Clabert and Roc, as they were only separated by a few years at most.
The set design and the production values are top-rate for a British studio in time of war. Of course the plotting is outlandish, but it's just so damn entertaining that many viewers can overlook the implausibility of the situation. As with most of the Gainsorough melodramas, a woman is the protagonist here, and we are led to believe that becoming the gypsy Rosannna is Calvert's attempt at transgressing a staid upper-class British society. The psychological premise of the plot is rather flimsily handled and barely explored, yet we are left with an interesting portrayal of a woman who, apparently raped by a gypsy when young, has no control over the competing sides of her personality.
Above all, MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS is great because it's just typical Gainsborough...melodrama, steamy love scenes (the reunion scene between Granger and Calvert is quite hot!), betrayal, murder, lust...see it!
The film concerns the highly implausible premise of a woman, Maddelena (Phyllis Calvert)Labardi, having completely split identities. For long periods she is the married, repressed English lady, complete with clipped vowels and high collars. Her daughter Angela comes home from boarding school, and it is soon revealed that something is not quite right with her mother. She has strange spells of behavior where she appears to be somewhere completely different, reacts badly to Angela's modern dress and spirit, and faints at the sight of Sandro Barucci (Peter Glenville), one of Angela's friends invited for a party. Soon Maddelena becomes Rosanna, a gypsy woman who cavorts in the Florentine underbelly with her dark, handsome, devilish lover Nino Barucci (Stewart Granger).
Calvert's complex character apparently has no idea of her illness, or her "other self" when she is either Maddelena or Rosanna. The only things that trigger awareness are religious symbols, the "seven moons" and set of jewelery. Angela and her fiancé soon venture to Florence to uncover the truth, and it of course ends in tragedy as Calvert's two identities catch up with and threaten one another.
The idea of Phyllis Calvert, refined English leading lady and all, as an amnesiac posing as a free-living Italian gypsy girl is not as ridiculous as you may think. Calvert plays her dual roles very well, quite convincing as both the repressed upper-middle class housewife and the long-haired gypsy, alternately puffing on cigarettes and sexily cavorting with her thief lover Granger.
Granger, who was Gainsborough's second most famous male lead after the great James Mason, does not have to do much else here apart from smolder and play a bit of a rough with Calvert in low-necked, sweaty shirts and carnival costumes. Granger was undoubtedly nowhere near as talented as the brooding, saturnine Mason who he had starred with in the "definitive" Gainsborough costume melodrama THE MAN IN GREY (1943), yet he is a strong screen presence regardless. Lovely Patricia Roc, often the second lead to Calvert or Margaret Lockwood (see THE WICKED LADY), is quite capable as the daughter, though it is a tad hard to buy the "mother-daughter" Clabert and Roc, as they were only separated by a few years at most.
The set design and the production values are top-rate for a British studio in time of war. Of course the plotting is outlandish, but it's just so damn entertaining that many viewers can overlook the implausibility of the situation. As with most of the Gainsorough melodramas, a woman is the protagonist here, and we are led to believe that becoming the gypsy Rosannna is Calvert's attempt at transgressing a staid upper-class British society. The psychological premise of the plot is rather flimsily handled and barely explored, yet we are left with an interesting portrayal of a woman who, apparently raped by a gypsy when young, has no control over the competing sides of her personality.
Above all, MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS is great because it's just typical Gainsborough...melodrama, steamy love scenes (the reunion scene between Granger and Calvert is quite hot!), betrayal, murder, lust...see it!