Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945) User Reviews

Don't read the plot summary.

[Neil-117 · 5/10 · 30 March 2002]

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.

Overblown and Mediocre

[JamesHitchcock · 5/10 · 24 August 2007]

British films of the forties, such as the well-known "Brief Encounter", were often characterised by emotional reserve, but occasionally the British film industry could go to the opposite extreme and produce full-blown melodramas, marked by an excess of emotion rather than by a lack of it. BBC2, as part of a season of famous British films, has recently shown two examples from 1945, "Madonna of the Seven Moons" and "The Seventh Veil". (It is interesting that both titles feature the number seven, often thought to have some mystical significance).

"Madonna of the Seven Moons" was made by Gainsborough Pictures, a company often associated with historical melodrama. The plot is, if anything, even more hysterically over-the-top than that of "The Seventh Veil". The action is set in Italy. Maddalena, a young girl, is attacked by a peasant while out walking in the countryside. (We presume that she is raped, but in the moral climate of the forties this could not be referred to explicitly). Maddalena marries a wealthy man, Giuseppe Labardi, but her ordeal has left her mentally disturbed and she develops a split personality. ("The Seventh Veil" also concerns a woman suffering from psychiatric illness). Whenever confronted with an emotional crisis she suddenly, and inexplicably, disappears from her home and reappears in a working-class district of Florence where she lives a double life as the gypsy girl Rosanna, the mistress of the criminal Nino Barucci. (The title is derived from the symbol of the seven moons carved above the door of Barucci's home). While she is living her life as Rosanna, she has no memory of her life as Maddalena, and vice versa, but eventually something will reverse the change in her personality and she will return to her life as part of the bourgeois Labardi family. Maddalena's family have no idea where she goes to when she vanishes, and much of the plot concerns the efforts of her daughter Angela to discover the truth about her mother. (Nino is equally concerned to find out where his mistress goes when she is not with him).

The film's Italian setting was presumably intended to be more glamorous and exotic than a British one would have been, and Barucci and the other working-class characters in the "Rosanna" scenes do indeed seem to be living in a sort of prettified, picturesque ethnic poverty. The "Maddalena" scenes, however, do not seem exotic at all. Indeed, apart from the names of the characters there is nothing that might suggest that these scenes are set anywhere other than in Britain. The Labardis have a number of British friends, and the British characters and the Italian ones (all played by British actors) all speak with the same upper-class English accents. Although the film is set in the late 1930s, no mention at all is made of Mussolini, the Fascist party or the approaching war. The film was made very late in the war, after Italy had switched to the Allied side. Perhaps it was felt that to mention such matters might be tactless towards out new-found allies.

The casting of Phyllis Calvert as Maddalena/Rosanna (a woman in her late thirties) and of Patricia Roc as Angela (in her late teens) is curious. Calvert and Roc were two of the most glamorous British actresses of the period, but were almost exactly the same age, both being twenty-nine when the film was made. It is therefore difficult to envisage them as mother and daughter. Stewart Granger, who plays Nino, was an actor accustomed to playing handsome, dangerous and fascinating rogues (Jeremy Fox in "Moonfleet" is another good example), but here he is unable to perform the service which James Mason performed for "The Seventh Veil", that of lifting the film above the level of the mundane.

There are some good things about the film; Calvert, for example, copes well with the challenge of effectively playing two different characters in one film. Overall, however, this is a mediocre film marked by overblown melodrama and a plot which is excessively complex and at times (especially during the first half) confusing. 5/10

Me again

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 30 December 2021]

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.

A nightmare!

[owenrussell · 5 June 2002]

POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!!!!!

I was taken to see this film by my parents (in the first week of April 1945) and so had no option but to sit through it. The scenes involving the change of mood in Maddalena when her split personality came into play, accompanied by matching music, I found absolutely and completely terrifying, so much so that I hardly dared look at the screen for fear of what would happen next. Sinister, mysterious, shadowy, menacing - these were my impressions of the film. To see it on video many years later was to be reminded vividly of these childhood reactions. An absolutely unique film! I have no doubt that it can be criticised on many technical grounds, but that meant nothing to a boy of 9. The whole thing was quite simply an extraordinary experience.

Like The Credit Says, It's A Gainsborough

[boblipton · 6/10 · 14 May 2023]

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.

Gypsies, thieves and diplomats

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 7 September 2019]

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.

Gypsies, Sex, Split Identities, Romance- It Must Be Gainsborough!

[jem132 · 9/10 · 8 July 2007]

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!

Roc Of Ages

[writers_reign · 5/10 · 14 June 2011]

Ah, those dear dead days beyond naivety ... when no one found it even a smidgen strange that in a film set entirely in Rome and Florence the entire cast spoke as if at the Hunt Ball in Cheltenham, when the make-up department didn't think it necessary to make Phyliis Calvert at least SEEM old enough to be the mother of Patricia Roc rather than her kid sister (there was, in fact, less than a year between them)when it didn't occur to anyone involved that berets are worn by men in France rather than Italy and ... oh well you get the picture. Poor Phyllis Calvert is so out of her depth as a feral knife-wielding, cigarette smoking gypsy-type wanton that the waters are above her head but probably Margaret Lockwood was working that week and Jean Kent was thought only fit for support. Stewart Granger is on hand doing his usual 'it's all about ME, screw the picture' bit and a bemused time is had by all.

Fascinating

[calvertfan · 10/10 · 27 April 2002]

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.

Convoluted slow-moving melodrama that over-the-top acting can't quite save.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 20 February 2013]

Part Merle Oberon and part Maria Montez, former convent girl Phyllis Calvet leads two lives: one a great lady, the other a fiery gypsy. Her husband (Peter Glenville) and daughter (Patricia Roc) find clues to try and find her after she disappears to return to the gypsy colony she had previously disappeared from a year before. This second personality has her involved with the equally fiery Stewart Granger who vows revenge when he comes to think she is stepping out on him.

Handsome to look at but on occasion a pretentious bore, this isn't a total fiasco, but not one of Gainsborough's true classics. The film actually is more interesting when it shows Calvert's emotions erupting as she transforms into her alter. Dulcie Gray steals every scene she is in as a feisty housekeeper, exclaiming at one point that "If they expect something to eat, the only thing they'll get is a piece of my mind". It should be noted that the cause of Calvert's split personality is pretty daring for its day, showing that since the British censors were quite different than the American Hays code, they could get away with things the major studios in Hollywood couldn't. I must also make a mention that in addition to the excellent art direction, the film's sound quality (particularly with its music) is striking as well.

unintentionally hilarious

[csatorsky · 29 January 2007]

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

Ridiculous Melodrama

[howardmorley · 3/10 · 28 July 2012]

I only voted this film 3/10.I agreed with James Hitchcock's above user review which is accurate and to the point.I suppose (unlike today) if you had survived WW11 in 1945 you did not have much choice when going to the cinema for some needed light relief.This film is supposedly set in Florence/Italy yet it is a place where everyone speaks perfect English and as another user humorously put it in their comments, sound as if they are all at the Hunt Ball in Cheltenham!Not a word of "Parliamo Italiano" was heard throughout even by the "peasant locals".Most farcical casting was the mother - Phyllis Calvert who looked and was the same age as her grown daughter - Patricia Roc (a point made by other reviewers).

Yet again we have a claustrophobically studio bound set with no relief of exterior shots and where the whole of Florence seems to be traversed in a 50 sq.yard of studio area and where characters suddenly appear in 5mins from one scene to another!A typical example was when Stewart Granger, in a comical fiesta outfit, appeared in the same bedroom as Phyllis Calvert (whose character had just died).Who let him into the villa? - I did not see how he gained entry!

Normally I enjoy the Gainsborough melodramas as long as they have some credulity, e.g. "Love Story" (1944), "The Man in Grey" (1943) and of course "The Wicked Lady" (1945) but this film was one of Gainsborough's duds, war or no war.The screenwriter/producer in my opinion have a lot to answer for producing this travesty.

an excellent film

[lolly_pop1983 · 8/10 · 17 May 2003]

*POSSIBLE SPOILERS*

I saw this film during my Intro. to British Cinema class and I thought it was fantastic. Just like a great film does, I was hooked after 10 minutes and I never expected what happened to happen. This must have been a groud-breaking film for the time...hinting at a rape scene involving an older man and a young girl that leaves her mentally scarred for the rest of her life, a woman with double-personalities, lots of sexual undertones...If you haven't seen it, make sure you do. One of the best films I saw the past year.

Not quite a year since you went away...

[Lejink · 5/10 · 28 October 2022]

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.

Gainsborough at its best.

[BrentCarleton · 9/10 · 13 July 2007]

This is arguably one of Gainsborough's best films ever, and as important in its own way, as "Brief Encounter." Gainsborough is sometimes criticized as a purveyor of "high toned" tosh for shop girls, yet no one did what they excelled in as well.

And "Madonna of the Seven Moons" excels in all departments. If some of its scenes and dialogue seem to beg a Carol Burnett parody, the film nonetheless grabs you from the first moment and doesn't let go till "The End."

Just try looking away!

The story: A convent bred schoolgirl is molested by a peasant, leading to dramatic repercussions in her later married life that impact both her husband and daughter.

And what a slick, juicy cinematic feast it is--with all the trimmings: psychiatry, nervous breakdowns, rebellious teen-age daughters, rhumba bands, dens of iniquity, fashion shows, Stewart Granger in gypsy pancake, male suiters and gigolos seemingly recruited from a "Brideshead Revisited" casting call, and all set against lavish settings from England to Italy (the art direction is A-1).

With such breadth of scope, mood, and tone, one would not be remotely surprised to see both Todd Slaughter and Olivier show up in the same scene, even though they don't.

The religious beginning and closing, with a genuinely touching depiction of Extreme Unction are deeply affecting.

It's also nice to see British stage great Reginald Tate in a rare screen performance.

Sin, redeem and save never had it so good! Highly recommended.

An old feel good kind of movie that I enjoyed a lot.

[manager-5 · 10/10 · 14 March 2000]

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...

Great Movie!

[butlerstc · 10/10 · 26 May 2013]

Very intense and interesting story. Also I found it fascinating that they were that advanced in their knowledge of how trauma affects the brain , especially since the medical community *just* diagnosed schizophrenia as dis associative identity disorder in recent years. I didn't expect them to tackle this subject so honestly and that was very refreshing. The scientific approach made the plot line of the movie totally realistic and believable even though it was a melo drama. Each character was well casted and well played, especially the woman in the lead role and her husband and lover. I liked this movie better tan the 10 faces of Eve. Excellent movie would watch again