The Seventh Veil

1945
Approved
1h 34m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

A concert pianist with amnesia fights to regain her memory.A concert pianist with amnesia fights to regain her memory.A concert pianist with amnesia fights to regain her memory.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.7/10

2.5K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Won 1 Oscar
- 2 wins & 1 nomination total

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
After he saw a rough cut of the film towards the end of the shoot, James Mason insisted that Ann Todd be given equal billing.

Goofs
When Peter writes a note to Francesca in a nightclub, she turns it over and writes her reply on its back. When Peter holds up the note to read her answer, however, its back is blank; his original note is missing.

Quotes
Dr. Larsen: Dr. Kendall, a surgeon doesn't operate without first taking off the patient's clothes, nor do we with the mind. You know what, uh, Staples says? The human mind is like Salome at the beginning of her dance, hidden from the outside world by seven veils: veils of reserve, shyness, fear. Now with friends, the average person will drop first one veil, then another, maybe three or four altogether. With a lover, she will take off five, or even six, but never the seventh. Never, you see the human mind likes to cover its nakedness too and keep its private thoughts to itself. Salome drops her seventh veil of her own free will, but you will never get the human mind to do that, and that is why I use narcosis. Five minutes under narcosis and down comes the seventh veil. Then we can see what is actually going on behind it. Then we can really help.

Connections
Featured in James Mason: The Star They Loved to Hate (1984)

A confined, upper-class English girl is passed over to a guardian where she is made to practice piano.

Leave it to the British to treat the subject of repressed emotion with such class and restraint. Francesca (Todd) is the very epitome of repressed feeling thanks to those presiding tyrannically over her life. Her only release from a cheerless existence are lushly romantic concerts, where the gloriously surging music echoes what's inside her. Without that, we might never know what lies beyond those tightly pursed lips. Even her quietly assertive flings with Peter and Maxwell are stripped of anything like outward emotions.

And all the time, her crippled guardian (Mason) makes her practice and practice and practice, alone and in an empty mansion. Poor Francesca, no wonder she cracks up. Nonetheless, it's drawing room drama at its most civilized.

I get a kick out of imagining how a boisterous American studio such as Warner Bros. would have handled the material, maybe with Joan Crawford in the lead. Anyway, Todd is appropriately restrained, while Mason is darkly mysterious as the Svengali taskmaster. But, I'm still wondering why that last scene seems so right when the screenplay has given us so little preparation to think it would be. Maybe it's the power of Mason's brooding presence that makes it work, but I think it does.

Anyway, as long as you don't mind presiding psychiatrists (Lom) with an answer for everything that ails us, this may be your cup of tea, British style.