Menotti - The Medium / Powers, Alberghetti, Savona, Dame, Morgan, Schippers

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DVD Reviews of Menotti - The Medium / Powers, Alberghetti, Savona, Dame, Morgan, Schippers

DVD Review: Cinematic Masterpiece on mediocre DVD
Summary: 5 Stars

The film is an amazing blend of opera (though, unfortunately, as it is a feature film, and not a stage production, the singing is not done on camera, something new technology such as that used by Michael Ritchie and Penny Moorcock may help eliminate in the future), film noir, and Italian neorealism--a striking, bizarre, and ultimately powerful combination that shows Menotti was equally gifted as a writer (he is his own librettist), composer, and filmmaker. An uncredited tall man appears frequently, and we are sometimes given to seeing Madame Flora's bizarre visions. Even though you can tell she is lip-synching, Marie Powers is as gifted an actor as she is a powerful alto. The sequence in whcih Monica and Toby attend a fair and the latter gets harassed is disturbingly handled. Despite this auspicious debut, he did not return to cinema, though his most famous work, _Amahl and the Night Visitors_ was written as the very first Hallmark Hall of Fame special (albeit they did not call it "Hall of Fame" yet), which he did not direct.

VAI has done a disservice to the film with their DVD. There is little digital artificating, but the clarity and horizonatal ghosting suggest the disc was mastered from a VHS tape. It has no special features, and only two menu screens, each having chapter selections for each of the two acts. The sound is probably as good as it could be, but much of the treble, many of including Alberghetti's higher passages, are difficult to make out, but VAI doesn't even provide us with optional subtitles, so I'm still not clear if the issue is that she loves Toby as a brother and feels protective or that she is actually in love with him, as it could have been either from the staging and what I did hear. Given Toby's affliction and household status, either one works.

I still had to give this important film five stars despite its presentation, which is at least passable. Even if Menotti can't make another film, he could surely have provided an audio commentary, if VAI could afford it, and an English subtitle option would not have been a big deal. Given the film was an Italian co-production, it's surprising that Italian subtitles aren't an option as well. I think this is an amazing film, but after having viewed a library copy of the DVD, I find that the $35/$31 price tag is extremely excessive in relation to the effort put into the disc.

Description of Menotti - The Medium / Powers, Alberghetti, Savona, Dame, Morgan, Schippers

It is a simple story with enormous psychological overtones: Madame Flora, a fraudulent medium, begins to believe her own deceptions and has a nervous breakdown after she feels a cold hand touch her during a séance. Marie Powers fills this complex role brilliantly, assisted by an excellent, well-directed supporting cast. Menotti's operas ran successfully on Broadway. This one shows why. --Joe McLellan

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