Madonna of the Seven Moons

Plot

A buried trauma from the past holds the key to the disappearance of a respectable married woman. Maddalena has a dual personality which leads her to forsake her husband and daughter, to flee to the house of the Seven Moons in Florence as the mistress of a jewel thief.

Cast

Background

The film was based on a novel by Margery Lawrence which had been published in 1931.

Film rights were bought by Gaumont British in 1938 who wanted to turn it into a vehicle for Renée Saint-Cyr, as part of an ambitious slate for Gainsborough in 1939. However the advent of World War Two disrupted these and plans to film Madonna were put on the backburner.

The project was re-activated in 1944 following the box office success of The Man in Grey and Fanny by Gaslight. It was 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.

Reception

The movie was very popular at the British box office, being one of the most seen films of its year. In 1946 readers of the Daily Mail voted the film their third most popular British movie from 1939 to 1945.

It was the only British film among the ten most popular films of 1946 in Australia.

Stewart Granger later called the film "terrible".

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.

The movie was the first of a series of Rank films distributed in the US by Universal.