The Medium

The composer Menotti wandered only once into the world of cinema, splendidly directing (with the help of Alexander Hammid) this version of his tragic opera about a fake spiritualist thrust into spiralling madness by an unseen hand at her throat. This magnificent chimera, although without progeny, is perfectly realised as an eerie, claustrophobic chamber piece, with a musical style that exists somewhere between Beat and Bartok. With monstrous characters and images only conceivable in a fevered or an operatic mind (where else would one find Toby the deaf mute gypsy boy, or defiant eyelids sealed with hot candle wax), yet fully realisable nowhere else but the cinema, Menotti sucks one into his world of overwrought emotions, heightened by a libretto that makes the film as accessible as West Side Story yet perfectly demonstrates the power of the spoken word.