MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS

MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS (1945). Director: Arthur Crabtree.

Maddalena (Phyllis Calvert) is a convent-raised girl who is raped and traumatized shortly before being married off to the kindly Giuseppe (John Stewart). Years go by and their daughter, Angela (Patricia Roc of The Wicked Lady), is now grown, but the announcement of her marriage to Evelyn (Alan Haines) precipitates another episode in which Maddalena runs off for months and vanishes. Maddalena has a whole other life as Rosanna, the lover of the criminal, Nino (Stewart Granger of Blanche Fury), in Florence. Neither Guiseppe nor Nino realize that Maddalena/Rosanna has a split personality due to her rape years before, and Nino thinks that she has taken a lover, Giuseppe, and decides to kill one or the other ... Madonna of the Seven Moons is hard to take seriously as it's much more of a pot-boiler than a drama, but it is arresting at times, and generally well-acted. Phylllis Calvert [The Man in Grey] is quite effective at getting across her different personalities and at different time periods, and the other cast members are all good. Especially notable are Peter Glenville as Sandro, Nino's slimy brother, and Nancy Price as their cackling old crone of  a mother. The film is entertaining, but one senses it would have worked better as an Italian verismo opera with a score by Pietro Mascagni.

Verdict: Watch out for those wild Florencian passions! ***. 

THE WICKED LADY

Lock Up Your Valuables: Margaret Lockwood

THE WICKED LADY (1945). Director: Leslie Arliss.

"How can I fail to love a man as rich as he is?" --  Barbara Worth.

Sir Ralph Skelton (Griffith Jones) is engaged to lovely Caroline (Patricia Roc), when her cousin, Barbara (Margaret Lockwood), shows up and manages to steal Ralph away from her. After the marriage the somewhat masochistic Caroline stays on to help run the estate. Barbara becomes a little careless and in a card game loses an heirloom, a beautiful necklace that belonged to her mother, to the unctuous Henrietta (Enid Stamp-Taylor). Hearing of a notorious highwayman who robs coaches, Barbara decides to emulate him to get the heirloom back and for excitement continues her career as  a masked desperado. The Wicked Lady seems to take a weird turn at this point, but that's when things get really interesting, with Barbara falling in love with the highwayman, Captain Jerry Jackson (James Mason) even as her husband, Ralph, pursues the both of them without knowing her true identity. The performances from the entire cast, including Felix Aylmer [Never Take Candy from a Stranger] as the pious servant, Hogarth, are excellent; the movie has a fast pace; and the situations that develop are suspenseful and fascinating, Lockwood [Hungry Hill] and Mason [Child's Play] make a great team -- the two appeared together in the terrible A Place of One's Own -- and Michael Rennie delivers in a small but significant role as another man who falls in love with Barbara.

Verdict: Dark and twisted romantic melodrama with excellent performances. ***1/2,