The Medium

Lovers of Italian opera will appreciate Menotti’s film version of his own work, but filmed opera, hovering as it does uneasily between musicals and reverent art-documentaries, and having the weaknesses of both without their compensatory strengths, is a notoriously disappointing genre for lovers of cinema. Menotti’s record of the stage production, with a few exterior scenes to ‘open out’ the set, lapses into an over-indulgent use of closeups and an excess of decorative baroquerie.