setsuled

A wealthy woman is unaware she's leading a second life as a petty thief in 1945's Madonna of the Seven Moons. How could she not know? Well, she was raped when she was a student at a convent, fracturing her mind. What follows is melodrama of the very highest degree. It's a bit campy and kind of hilariously miscast and I enjoyed it.

Phyllis Calvert, who was 30 at the time of filming, plays Maddalena/Rosalina and Patricia Roc, who was also 30 at the time, plays her free-spirited, very modern daughter, Angela.

Maddalena is shocked when her daughter comes home from college wearing shorts. Angela tells her mother, whom she calls "darling", that she's being silly and ought to dress more daringly, especially as she's beautiful and "still young." I'll say.

Of course, Maddalena would be more shocked to learn that she herself occasionally changes into gypsy clothes and steals off to make love with an Italian thief named Nino, played by a very English Stewart Granger. Okay, Shakespeare set stories in Italy all the time and had everyone speaking English, but he made people from different class strata use different English. Nino's whole gang of thieves sound exactly as posh as all of Maddalena's social circle.

With all the melodramatic plot points, it really feels like I'm watching a group of English aristocrats enacting an idle role-play at a slumber party; "I say, let's all pretend we're gypsies in--oh, I don't know--Italy!" It works out to be pretty sexy, especially when Calvert is slinking around Nino's tavern, having pointless catty dialogue with the scullery maid Nino'd been sleeping with or helping him play Solitaire.