User:Colapeninsula/Maddalena (1971 film)

Maddalena or Magdalena was a 1971 feature film by the Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz. It was co-written by Sergio Bazzini and Jerzy Kawalerowicz. It is perhaps best known for its score, by the Italian composer Ennio Morricone.

Plot
The film focuses on Maddalena (played by Lisa Gastoni), a troubled woman who falls in love with a Catholic priest (Eric Woofe).

Production
The film was an Italian-Yugoslav co-production. The opening scene was shot at the church of San Salvatore in Vasanello.

Soundtrack
Ennio Morricone wrote the soundtrack, which includes "Chi Mai", later reused in Le Professionnel and The Life and Times of David Lloyd George.

Critical reaction
Roger Greenspun in the New York Times was critical, calling it "15 minutes of dull movie puffed out to more than an hour and a half by flashbacks, fantasy flashes, shifts of focus, pans, track, zooms, and whatever other tricks can be used to inflate cinema vocabulary and diminish the medium." He criticised Gastoni in the title role as too old and lacking in her expressions of emotion.

ComingSoon.it rated it 3/5. Cinema of the World claims the film is "long-forgotten" but the soundtrack is "considered by some as one of Morricone’s finest, and quite rightly so". Underscores gave the soundtrack 4/5, singling out "Chi Mai".