The name is absent

Appendix 3.2: Sample films - synopses and character lists

MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS UK 44

friend explains, for the family and for the audience, the
medical condition which accounts for her history. Her mind had
been split as the result of a shock during her childhood: only
the audience has all the information and hence the details of
her traumatic experience, information which is denied to
Maddalena/Rosanna herself since she dies without conscious
knowledge of the co-existence of her two selves.

In addition to this study of female sexuality which is offered
through the woman's story there is also considerable emphasis
on different relationships between women - particularly
between the mother and daughter, Maddalena and Angela. The
film suggests that the daughter's successful reconciliation of
different aspects of her own personality, so tragically
separated in the mother's case, is a consequence of the
healthier social environment of the 'new' world. Music,
dancing, dress and jewellery are used in various ways to
symbolise the old and new understandings of 'woman' within the
context of religion and the family, and in terms of the power
relations implicit in the politics of gender.

Thus the film explores the position of women, frequently
defined as mysterious and/or inadequate, drawing on
psychiatric discourse for explanations. Yet there is also a
subtext running through the film which offers a position from
which to criticise this discourse - always defined as a male
one. This subtext is located in the utterances, and more
often the 'looks' of minor and subordinate female characters
who are privileged in the film image at moments where they
offer access to it: the subtext is in this way offered as a
'feminine' voice.

Differences in the perception of events, and the
institutionalised differences in sexuality and power between
male and female discourses which follow, are clearly evident
in this film. The dominance of a male discourse with its
consequent marginalisation of the feminine is articulated to
the audience in the narrative's structure as well as in the
contours of the melodrama.

Female characters in order of appearance, character groups

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