The Seventh Veil (1945) is a variety of woman’s film.
This may sound dismissive but the so-called 'woman's picture' is a sometimes unacknowledged genre from in particular the 1940s, a similarly themed series of films which focus on the mental health of domestic, middle class women.
Often the women in these films are prisoners, either physcial or mental, or as here ― both.
Because of this, these heroines are also generally quite paranoid.
You can tell The Seventh Veil is one such ‘paranoid woman film’ because of how it opens ― a woman in a sick bed.
It’s Ann Todd (playing Francesca) and she is in the traditional pose of the ‘sick’ woman, in a bed, asleep one second, and the next frighteningly alert to the disturbances of her mind.
It doesn’t matter necessarily that this bed is in a sanatorium ― these beds are just as often in houses, generally creepy, weird houses, but domestic situation nonetheless.
