not as good as all the hype

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

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.

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.

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

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.