There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Seven veils ago, I saw this film, and here it is again, all wrapped up in its mystery once more. The lead performances by Ann Todd and James Mason are so good that the whole film sweeps you away with its rather implausible story. No wonder it got an Oscar for best original screenplay by the Two Boxes (Muriel and Sydney Box, a famous cinematic couple, Sydney also being the producer of this film), and is one of the ten most popular British films of all time, according to a survey. This film also launched Herbert Lom's career onto a higher level, because he was so reassuring and calm as the hypno-therapist who treats Ann Todd that everyone wanted to run to him with their troubles, or at least see more of him on the screen, which was almost as good. Once again, we see the Scottish actor Hugh McDermott (1906-1972) playing an American, which he did so often everybody thought he really was one. (Of course, it is anatomically impossible for a Scot to be an American, as everybody knows, unless they have their kilts surgically removed at birth, that is.) Muir Mathieson not only conducts the orchestra (the London Symphony Orchestra) but is actually seen to conduct the orchestra, for this is a film about a musician, namely Ann Todd herself, a tormented concert pianist who has lots of veils smothering her oppressed psyche and who is worried about her hands ever since a sadistic headmistress caned them at school just before a music exam, causing her to fail it and miss a music scholarship. And as one sensationalist poster advertising this film in 1945 stated: 'It dares to strip bare a woman's mind.' Well, that is a terrifying thought to us men, for what might we find there? And surely it is impolite to remove veil after veil like that, ending up with the seventh and last, beneath which we will at last understand her, not to mention what we might see. You know what we men are like about wanting to lift veils and have a peek. When I was four, I used to peek under the skirt of a girl at school named Rita to see what colour knickers she was wearing, as she changed colours every day. I would then shout out to the class: 'They're blue today!' or 'They're pink today!' What fun. It was also such fun to tease her, as she was rather stuck on herself and was always flouncing around self-importantly. But this film is in black and white, so we can't tell what colour knickers anybody at all is wearing. And in any case, in 1945, there were no scenes which showed them anyway. Sydney Box in 1957 produced an amusing film entitled THE TRUTH ABOUT WOMEN, with Larry Harvey. So you see, Box spent years trying to understand them, and even with all the help his wife could give him, I wonder if he ever succeeded. Most of us chaps are still exploring this mysterious subject, except for the ones who bat for the other side, of course, to whom women are objects of indifference, which is such a pity and such a waste of pulchritude. ('Pulchritude' was Charlie Chaplin's favourite euphemistic word, a nod in the direction of gentility. Look it up.) This film is very much a melodrama in the high style. Ann Todd is left an orphan in her teens and her only living relative is James Mason, a second cousin. He reluctantly takes her in, but has an inveterate hatred of women. He is continually looking accusingly at the oil portrait of his deceased mother, which hangs over the mantel of the drawing room, so that gives us a clue. He is extremely rich and lives in a kind of small palace in London. He walks with a pronounced limp, aided by a stick. He barely speaks to Todd, having contempt for her because she is female. He often disappears for weeks on end without explanation, and he turns up late at night in top hat and tails, having been at Pratt's perhaps, and God knows what opera before that, on his own of course, as he is a solitary figure. All the servants in the house are men. If it were not 1945, when no such thing existed, we might even suspect him of being gay. But his attitude towards Todd changes entirely when he discovers that she can play the piano excellently well. For he is a classical music fanatic. He plays, but not well enough. It occurs to him that he can realize his passion for the piano by nurturing the genius of his ward, so he spares no trouble, sends her to the Royal College of Music (some scenes are shot there, and Ann Todd spent three months there preparing to play her role), and is always by her side for the five hours a day that she practices, obsessively promoting her career. She becomes a famous pianist, plays Rachmaninoff concerti and so forth in flowing dresses. Ann Todd herself could play the piano, and there are many scenes where she is really doing it, which are most impressive. For the final sound track, however, Eileen Joyce recorded the pieces. She is the same person who played all that Rachmaninoff on the sound track of David Lean's BRIEF ENCOUNTER of this same year. This is essentially a psychological melodrama, so the psyches of Mason and Todd are the centre of our concern. They are both deeply disturbed people. And what will come of all this? Especially when men start to enter Ann Todd's life? Mason takes that very badly. The rules of IMDb reviewing forbid discussion of the ending, so it is not possible to go into what happens when the seventh veil is lifted by the determined Herbert Lom, with his relentless hypnotherapy sessions. But it is certainly all very dramatic indeed.

Psychiatrist Herbert Lom is trying to reach into the lost soul of a suicidal pianist (Ann Todd). Under hypnosis, he learns of how as a young girl she was taken in by a distant relative (James Mason), a brooding man whose mother ran off years ago, leaving him distrustful of all women. Mason soon realizes what a talent Todd has as a piano player and begins to mentor her, softening up, but still remaining a possessive Svengali. When Todd falls in love with Hugh McDermott, Mason does everything he can to end the relationship so he can continue to possess her, but she runs off only to find tragedy that threatens to destroy all of her dreams. It is her inability to play the piano that draws psychiatrist Lom to visit Mason in hopes of snapping her out of her manic depression.This Gothic drama features some great classical music and is mesmerizing from start to finish. I don't know if I see a romantic potential between Todd and Mason because of his possessiveness, but like Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins, they are without meaning when apart. It's nice to see a very Herbert Lom, best known as the harassed Inspector Dreyfeuss (who later went bonkers) in "The Pink Panther" movies. Still years from his Hollywood success, Mason was one of England's brightest actors, and his voice is always refreshing to hear. Todd is perfect as the fragile heroine, a combination Jane Eyre/Mrs. DeWinter ("Rebecca") that makes me wonder how Joan Fontaine would have played this part in an American version. Definitely not to be missed!

This is a true classic. If you can appreciate a film as a work of art, regardless of whether it represents the genre you like, then this will be in your list of great movies. Like all movies about relationships between men and woman, it will be open season for the kooks trying to work off their own personal problems, but take it at its face value. Ignore the political correctness parasites and appreciate the movie.James Mason's portrayal of a man who was hiding from the world but eventually found something to bring him back into it - a flawed but selfless love - is a work of genius. Ann Todd is excellent also, as the young girl who becomes a famous pianist under his direction. Herbert Lom, playing the character role of a psychiatrist, is brilliant.It is a melodrama, but very, very well done, with great acting.

British films of the forties, such as the well-known "Brief Encounter", were often characterised by emotional reserve, but occasionally the British film industry could go to the opposite extreme and produce full-blown melodramas, marked by an excess of emotion rather than by a lack of it. BBC2, as part of a season of famous British films, has recently shown two examples from 1945, "Madonna of the Seven Moons" and "The Seventh Veil". (It is interesting that both titles feature the number seven, often thought to have some mystical significance)."The Seventh Veil" begins with Francesca Cunningham, a well-known concert pianist, attempting suicide by jumping from a bridge. A psychiatrist, Dr Larsen, is brought in to treat her, and under hypnosis he begins to explore her past. The title refers to a theory of Larsen's about the human mind which he compares to the body of a dancer performing the dance of the seven veils. The "veils" which protect the mind are the layers of concealment with which we try to protect our emotional privacy; we may discard some of these in the company of a friend or lover, but never all seven. Only psychiatric treatment can remove the seventh veil and reveal the truth underneath.Francesca, it appears, was a gifted musician as a child, but failed an important piano examination after being beaten on the hands by a strict headmistress as a punishment. She was orphaned as a teenager and brought up by her guardian Nicholas, her father's second cousin, a wealthy but deeply unhappy and reclusive man, a cripple and a confirmed bachelor. Nicholas encourages Francesca's talent for music, but proves a hard taskmaster, forcing her to practise and study until she achieves perfection. Francesca achieves success as a pianist, but at the cost of her happiness, feeling lonely and neglected. A romance with Peter, a young American band-leader, ends when Nicholas insists that Francesca must travel abroad to pursue her musical studies.Later, Francesca falls in love with Max Leyden, a painter who paints her portrait. (Max's nationality is something of a mystery. His surname sounds Dutch, and he was played by the German-born Albert Lieven. He speaks with a foreign accent, but we learn that his Christian name is short for the British-sounding Maxwell rather than Maxim or Maximilian). While attempting to elope with Max, Francesca is involved in a car accident. Although she is only slightly injured, she is convinced that her hands have been irreparably damaged and that she will never play the piano again. It is this that leads her to attempt suicide.Ann Todd was miscast in the role of Francesca; she was thirty-six at the time the film was made, considerably older than her character who is first seen as a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl and who in later scenes is probably in her twenties. Nicholas, of course, is supposed to be a generation older than Francesca, but in reality Todd was slightly older than James Mason.At the heart of the film is the love-hate relationship between Nicholas and Francesca. Although she is the patient on the psychiatrist's couch, the film psychoanalyses him as much as it does her. He resents her intrusion into his bachelor existence, but also finds himself falling in love with her. (When Larsen's treatment reveals that it is he, and not Peter or Max, who is the true love of her life, this comes as no surprise). His outbursts of anger may stem from his inability to express his love, and possibly from a sense of guilt. Although his feelings for his ward are not actually incestuous- in Britain there is no legal bar to the marriage of second, or even first, cousins- he is, in a practical if not a legal sense, her adoptive father, so he may well experience a sense of guilt at his feelings for her.During the forties the cinema, both in Britain and America, seemed to be in love with the science of psychiatry, and there was a cycle of films in which psychiatrists play an important role. Hitchcock's "Spellbound", for example, also dates from 1945, and John Brahm's "The Locket" from the following year. "The Seventh Veil" is not quite in the same class as "The Locket", and certainly not in the same league as Hitchcock's film, but it is nevertheless watchable, and the main reason is Mason's Nicholas. He was an actor whose performances could vary in quality, but here he is very good, bringing out the conflicts at the heart of his character's existence. Despite its melodramatic storyline and its miscast heroine, this is a film worth watching even today. 6/10