Madonna of the Seven Moons is both spicy and grim, with the best elements of passion, frankness,and cheap psychology offered by the Gothic romance genre. (It was the mostextravagant of the "Gainsborough Gothics," period romances whichGainsborough Pictures supplied the English as a counter to wartime and postwarausterity.) Phyllis Calvert plays Madalena Labardi, the wife of a wealthy winemerchant. A docile paragon of virtue, Madalena does have a problem: every sixyears, she suffers a complete change of personality, becomes the gypsy Rosanna,and runs off to her lover Nino (Stewart Granger) who possibly operates on asimilar schedule, as he is always waiting for her. At the root of thisschizophrenia is a childhood trauma, giving this excellent costume melodrama itsbasis in medical case history.