User reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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...