Nathaniel Hawthorne

In 1828, the bankrupt Pyncheon family fight over Seven Gables, the ancestral mansion. To obtain the house, Jaffrey Pyncheon obtains his brother Clifford's false conviction for murder. Hepzibah, Clifford's sweet fiancée, patiently waits twenty years for his release, whereupon Clifford and his former cellmate, abolitionist Matthew, have a certain scheme in mind.

The film, a swirling drama of love and death, is loosely adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1860 novel The Marble Faun. Princess Maria (Elena Sangro) is married to the Duke of Helgoland (Ugo Bazzini), the leader of an anti-government plot about to be exposed by their house guest Count Giorgio (Carlo Gualandri). Giorgio tries to involve Maria, and in his fatal fight with Helgoland, her husband is killed using the knife that Maria hands to Giorgio. Forced to flee, they meet up again in Rome, where Maria has changed her name to Myriam and Giorgio has become a monk. Giorgio still desires Myriam, who rejects his advances, and she convinces her suitor Donatello (Giorgio Fini) to kill him.

In Puritan Boston, seamstress Hester Prynne and kindly Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale fall in love. After Dimmesdale must go away for a time to England, he returns to discover that Hester has given birth to their child and is the focus of local censure.

A young poet in the midst of crafting his epic masterpiece discovers a hidden Oasis within a vast forest. Inside this forbidden world a dark and alluring maiden, appearing both innocent and malevolent, lures him into an alternate reality of beauty and poison. Within this secret garden, the poet is confronted with a very harsh and introspective question. Is Man a unified cosmos, or a phantasm immortally trapped between two dark, warring forces?

In 1828, the bankrupt Pyncheon family fight over Seven Gables, the ancestral mansion. To obtain the house, Jaffrey Pyncheon obtains his brother Clifford's false conviction for murder. Hepzibah, Clifford's sweet fiancée, patiently waits twenty years for his release, whereupon Clifford and his former cellmate, abolitionist Matthew, have a certain scheme in mind.

The film, a swirling drama of love and death, is loosely adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1860 novel The Marble Faun. Princess Maria (Elena Sangro) is married to the Duke of Helgoland (Ugo Bazzini), the leader of an anti-government plot about to be exposed by their house guest Count Giorgio (Carlo Gualandri). Giorgio tries to involve Maria, and in his fatal fight with Helgoland, her husband is killed using the knife that Maria hands to Giorgio. Forced to flee, they meet up again in Rome, where Maria has changed her name to Myriam and Giorgio has become a monk. Giorgio still desires Myriam, who rejects his advances, and she convinces her suitor Donatello (Giorgio Fini) to kill him.

In Puritan Boston, seamstress Hester Prynne and kindly Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale fall in love. After Dimmesdale must go away for a time to England, he returns to discover that Hester has given birth to their child and is the focus of local censure.

A young poet in the midst of crafting his epic masterpiece discovers a hidden Oasis within a vast forest. Inside this forbidden world a dark and alluring maiden, appearing both innocent and malevolent, lures him into an alternate reality of beauty and poison. Within this secret garden, the poet is confronted with a very harsh and introspective question. Is Man a unified cosmos, or a phantasm immortally trapped between two dark, warring forces?