1945 British film
Madonna of the Seven Moons is a 1945 British drama film starring Phyllis Calvert, Stewart Granger and Patricia Roc. Directed by Arthur Crabtree for Gainsborough Pictures, the film was produced by Rubeigh James Minney,[5] with cinematography from Jack Cox and screenplay by Roland Pertwee. It was one of the Gainsborough melodramas of the mid-1940s popular with WW2-era female audiences.
Plot
A teenage rape of a convent student holds the key to her disappearance as a respectable married woman. Maddalena was left with a dual personality, which leads her to forsake her husband and daughter and flee her Florentine home in the house of the Seven Moons as the mistress of a gypsy jewel thief.[6]
Background
Film rights to the 1931 Margery Lawrence novel[7] were bought by Gaumont British in 1938, which wanted to turn it into a vehicle for Renée Saint-Cyr[8][9] as part of an ambitious slate for Gainsborough in 1939.[10] However the advent of World War II disrupted these and plans, and Madonna was put on the backburner.
The project was re-activated in 1944 following the box office successes of The Man in Grey and Fanny by Gaslight.[11] Vernon Sewell said he was going to direct A Place of One's Own but was told to do Madonna of the Seven Moons instead and refused.[12] The movie wound up being the first film directed by Arthur Crabtree. He had spent many years previously working for Gainsborough as a cinematographer. Phyllis Calvert later recalled:
Arthur was a very good cinematographer, but there weren't enough directors, and so people who were scriptwriters or were behind the camera were suddenly made directors. It wasn't that Crabtree was an unsatisfactory director, just that we found ourselves very satisfactory – we did it ourselves. But the fact that he had been a lighting cameraman was wonderful for us, because he knew exactly how to photograph us.[13]
Academic Sue Harper later wrote an analysis of the film, where she attributed producer R.J. Minney as being the main creative force behind it.[14] The story, which is supposed to be based on a real case history, begins with a rather explicit suggestion of rape of a devout, convent-educated young woman that causes her to develop split personalities. Calvert, who played Patricia Roc’s mother, was only four months her senior in real life.
Filmink dubbed Jean Kent the "back up Margaret Lockwood".[15]
Reception
Box Office
The movie was very popular at the British box office, being one of the most seen films of its year.[16][17][18][19] In 1946 readers of the Daily Mail voted the film their third most popular British movie from 1939 to 1945.[20]
It was the only British film among the ten most popular films of 1946 in Australia.[21]
In Latin America the film earned $282,367.[22]
Stewart Granger later called the film "terrible".[23]
US release
British films had not traditionally performed well in the US but screenings to US soldiers in Britain led J Arthur Rank to feel that Madonna of the Seven Moons would do well there.[clarify][24] It became the first of a series of Rank films distributed in the US by Universal.[25]
