Secret Ceremony

Secret Ceremony
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Joseph Losey
Screenplay by	George Tabori
Based on	Ceremonia secreta by Marco Denevi
Produced by	John Heyman Norman Priggen
Starring	Elizabeth Taylor Mia Farrow Robert Mitchum
Cinematography	Gerry Fisher
Edited by	Reginald Beck
Music by	Richard Rodney Bennett
Production company	World Film Services
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release dates	23 October 1968 (1968-10-23) (U.S.) 19 June 1969 (1969-6-19) (London)
Running time	109 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$2.5 million—$3.1 million
Box office	$5.2 million

Secret Ceremony is a 1968 British drama psychological horror thriller film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum. Based on the Argentine novel Ceremonia secreta by Marco Denevi, the film follows an indigent prostitute who meets a strange young girl who insists that she is her long-lost mother.

Plot

Leonora, a middle-aged prostitute, is despondent over the death of her daughter. Cenci, a lonely young woman, follows Leonora to the cemetery and strikes up a conversation with her, inviting Leonora to her home. Leonora is struck by the likeness between Cenci and her late daughter.

A resemblance of Leonora to Cenci's late mother becomes obvious once Leonora notices a portrait. Cenci, who is 22 but looks and acts much younger, asks Leonora to stay. A lie is told to her aunts, Hilda and Hannah, that Leonora is actually Cenci's late mother's cousin.

Cenci is found one day cowering under a table. Albert, her stepfather, has paid a visit. Cenci is terrified of him, claiming that Albert had raped her. Leonora is repelled by the man's presence until Albert tells her that Cenci is mentally unstable and had repeatedly tried to seduce him.

On a beach one day, Cenci and Albert have sexual relations. A despondent Cenci commits suicide. At the funeral, Leonora now knows whom she chooses to believe. After standing beside Albert in silence during the burial, Leonora produces a knife and stabs him.

The film ends with Leonora lying in the bedroom of her apartment, listlessly hitting the cord of a ceiling lamp while reciting a poem about perseverance.

Cast

• Elizabeth Taylor as Leonora
• Mia Farrow as Cenci
• Robert Mitchum as Albert
• Peggy Ashcroft as Hannah
• Pamela Brown as Hilda
• Robert Douglas as Sir Alex Gordon
• George Howell as first cleaner
• Penelope Keith as hotel assistant
• Roger Lloyd Pack as cleaner
• Angus MacKay as vicar
• Michael Strong as Dr. Walter Stevens

Production

Development

The short story on which the film is based won a $5,000 prize in a competition run by Life en Español. It had already been filmed for Argentine television when it was optioned in 1963 by Dore Schary.

In an October 1969 interview with Roger Ebert, Mitchum claimed that the film's production was "in trouble" when he arrived and that his presence did not help.

Filming

The production budget for Secret Ceremony was between $2,450,000 and $3,173,212. The main location for the film was Debenham House in London. Other London locations were St Mary Magdalene Church in Paddington, the area around the Molyneux Monument in Kensal Green Cemetery and the junction of Chepstow Road and St Stephen's Mews in Paddington. The hotel and beach scenes were shot around the Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.

• 
  Debenham House
• 
  St Mary Magdalene Church
• 
  Kensal Green Cemetery
• 
  Chepstow Road corner shop
• 
  Hotel Huis ter Duin as it looked at the time

Release

Secret Ceremony was released theatrically in the United States by Universal Pictures on 23 October 1968. It premiered in London the following year on 19 June 1969.

Reception

Box office

The film earned approximately $3 million in United States and Canadian rentals, with a worldwide total gross of $5,232,905.

Critical response

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Secret Ceremony is constructed on the dualist view of man as a battleground for the twin aspirations of Good and Evil. Appropriately, in view of its schizophrenic theme, two is the film's magic number: two mothers and two daughters, two aunts, two fathers, two funerals, two baptisms (one actual, one metaphorical when Leonora accepts Cenci as her daughter), and above all, two temples of communion. ... In many ways, notably in its insidious illumination of the fascination of madness, Secret Ceremony reminds one of Lilith [1964], but the style is entirely Losey's own, a return to the crystalline ellipses of Accident [1967] after the opulent undulations of Boom! [1968], and with superb, unexpectedly funny characterisations by the entire cast."

Renata Adler in the New York Times wrote that it was "incomparably better" than its predecessor, Accident, and that beneath its "elaborate fetishism and dragging prose, there is a touching story of people not helping enough," but she admitted that the film had its "longueurs, but not beyond endurance."

Ernest Callenbach of Film Quarterly wrote it was "difficult to guess" what the film was about, but felt that its "dominant note, if there is one, is of Losey's usual creepy, misanthropic disgust with sex and how people misuse each other to get it." He also praised Mia Farrow's "touching and perverse and human" performance.

Modern appraisal

Writing 30 years later after its release, John Patterson of The Guardian listed Secret Ceremony among the Losey films he dismissed as "woefully misguided material."

Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader lambasted the film as embodying the director's "worst tendencies as a filmmaker: the movie is cold without being chilling, confusing without being challenging."

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "This moody mistaken-identity melodrama quickly becomes a macabre muddle of daft sexual psychosis and suspect psychology when nympho Mia Farrow adopts prostitute Elizabeth Taylor as her surrogate mother after a meeting on a London bus. The return of Farrow's stepfather Robert Mitchum provides this meandering morsel of Swinging Sixties gothic with a suitably off-the-wall climax.

Dan Callahan at Senses of Cinema suggests that Secret Ceremony’s failures may serve as its virtues, comparing the film favorably to Some Like It Hot (1959) or Duck Soup (1933).

Callahan writes:

{{blockquote | Secret Ceremony is a film that is so bad, so irredeemably, lovably foolish, that it provides the sort of life-embracing laughs many comedies fail to engender…Is there room to include such a film among a great director’s great works? Unless we are unnecessarily stuffy, which would miss the point of his career entirely, the answer has to be yes.

Leslie Halliwell offers this concise critique: "Nuthouse melodrama for devotees of the director."

Sources

• Caute, David (1994). Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-195-06410-0.
• Halliwell, Leslie (1989). Halliwell's Film Guide (7th ed.). London: Paladin. ISBN 0586088946.
• Hirsch, Foster (1980). Joseph Losey. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-9257-0.
• Norman, Barry (2017). Radio Times Guide to Films (18th ed.). London: Immediate Media Company. ISBN 978-0-992-93644-0.
• Palmer, James; Riley, Michael (1993). The Films of Joseph Losey. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-38386-2.
• Walker, Alexander (1974). Hollywood UK: The British Film Industry in the Sixties. New York City, New York: Stein and Day. ISBN 978-0-812-81549-8.

External links

• Secret Ceremony at IMDb
• Secret Ceremony at the British Film Institute
• Secret Ceremony at the TCM Movie Database
• Secret Ceremony at Letterboxd