A partially successful 1951 release that gives filmed opera a good name. THE MEDIUM is a filming of the similarly monikered opera by Gian-Carlo Menotti, who directed this film—which, I should stress, is not a recording of the stage version.
To elaborate on that last point, most opera-adapted films (such as Ingmar Bergman’s celebrated 1975 filming of Mozart’s THE MAGIC FLUTE) tend to be mere filmings of the stage productions, complete with intercuts of rapturous audiences, but this MEDIUM is more in line with the 1987 British TV filming of Michael Nyman’s THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT and Andrzej Zulawski’s audacious 1989 cinematic transposition of Mussorgsky’s BORIS GODOUNOV, i.e. a full-bodied cinematic event in which actors are called upon to lip-synch the opera’s music and lyrics.
The material, incidentally, was remade on numerous occasions over the decades (at least once by Gian-Carlo Menotti himself), most notably in 1977 and ‘94 TV filmings, but opera and film buffs alike seem to concur that this 1951 film remains the definitive cinematic rendering of THE MEDIUM.
Baba is a woman who, as “Madame Flora,” masquerades as a fraudulent psychic, making her fortune by convincing grief-stricken parents that their deceased children are communicating with them from beyond the grave. One night during a séance Baba feels the sensation of hands on her throat. This causes her a great deal of psychological distress, resulting in misdirected upset toward her grown daughter Monica and adopted son Toby, a dark-skinned mute. Baba becomes convinced that Toby was playing a trick on her during the fateful séance, and abuses him unmercifully via beatings and wax dripped on his closed eyelids. Eventually Baba snaps entirely and, during the requisite dark and stormy night, tragedy inevitably strikes.
The music of Menotti’s opera is, frankly, not very inspiring. A major problem is that, as in many operas, the dialogue is difficult to make out, even though much of it is rendered in colloquial English (sample line: “How many times have I told you not to touch my things?”). The film’s best portions are those presented without dialogue, such as the first five minutes, in which Baba is shown traversing the slum around her apartment, and a mid-film visit to a travelling fair, in which Toby finds himself adrift amid a singularly apathetic crowd. Yes, the implications of Toby being a dark-skinned man amid a crowd of white people is very much faced up to here and elsewhere in the film.
What’s evident throughout is a fully developed filmmaking sensibility that was sadly never utilized much further. The noirish black and white photography, which makes extensive use of shadows, is brilliant (with numerous shots down darkened corridors and alleyways) in a film that makes for an excellent companion-piece to the similarly oriented NIGHTMARE ALLEY. That’s a good thing, because the narrative is painfully thin; ultimately it’s the visual brilliance, coupled with a committed lead performance by Marie Powers as Baba, that provides THE MEDIUM’s major, and possibly only, point of interest.
Vital Statistics
THE MEDIUM
Transfilm
Director: Gian-Carlo Menotti
Producer: Walter Lowendahl
Screenplay: Gian-Carlo Menotti
Cinematography: Enzo Serafin
Editing: Alexander Hammid
Cast: Marie Powers, Leo Coleman, Leopoldo Savona, Belva Kibler, Beverly Dame, Donald Morgan, Anna Maria Alberghetti