The Medium

A film noir opera? Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium exists in its own category: a film noir musical with no spoken dialogue and supernatural undertones. Having successfully staged his own opera in New York in 1946, followed by a Broadway musical adaptation the following year, Menotti resisted any urge to Hollywoodize the film adaptation with extra scenes, dialogue, or narration: instead, every line in the film is sung as recitative punctuated by a handful of arias, the most memorable probably when Madame Flora and her daughter comfort each other on the stairs. Played by the excellent Marie Powers, Madame Flora is a con artist who pretends to conduct seances that make contact with the dead loved ones of her gullible clients. She’s assisted in these charades by her daughter Monica (Anna Maria Alberghetti) and Monica’s mute gypsy friend Toby (Leo Coleman), both of whom are morally reluctant to participate. One evening, when Flora holds a seance for new client Mrs. Nolan (Belva Kibler), she feels real human hands grasp her neck in the dark and stops the proceedings out of shock; this was not a part of the act. Despite Toby’s continued denials over the coming days, Flora accuses the boy of pranking her and proceeds to pressure him into a confession by any means necessary, including whipping his back raw and dropping hot wax in his eyes. The more Toby resists, the more Flora seems to lose her marbles, descending into bouts of alcoholic hysteria. Very much an urban mood piece a la Dementia (1955), The Medium offers gorgeous B&W cinematography that exaggerates the claustrophobic qualities of Flora’s apartment while painting every corner with shadows so that we often can see only the characters’ pallid faces in closeup. Loaded with melodrama, especially when the affections between Monica and Toby are on display, Menotti’s instrumental score exaggerates these emotions through soft, plaintive strings in one scene, a full swelling orchestra in the next.