Secret Ceremony
Directed byJoseph Losey
Screenplay byGeorge Tabori
Based onCeremonia secreta
by Marco Denevi
Produced byJohn Heyman
Norman Priggen
StarringElizabeth Taylor
Mia Farrow
Robert Mitchum
CinematographyGerry Fisher
Edited byReginald Beck
Music byRichard Rodney Bennett
Color processTechnicolor
Production
company
World Film Services
Distributed byUniversal Pictures
Release dates
  • 23 October 1968 (1968-10-23) (United States)
  • June 1969 (1969-06) (United Kingdom)
Running time
109 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2,450,000[1] or $3,173,212[2]
Box office$3 million (US/ Canada rentals)[3]
$5,232,905 (total)[4]

Secret Ceremony is a 1968 British drama-thriller film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum.

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

Rest of cast listed alphabetically:

Production

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.[5]

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.[6]

Filming locations

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.[7][8] The hotel and beach scenes were shot around the Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.[8][9]

Reception

Secret Ceremony has divided critics since its release. 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."[10] 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.[11] 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."[12] Similarly, 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."[13]

References

  1. ↑ Alexander Walker, Hollywood, England, Stein and Day, 1974 p345
  2. ↑ Caute, David (1994). Joseph Losey. Oxford University Press. p. 222.
  3. ↑ "Big Rental Films of 1969". Variety. 7 January 1970. p. 15.
  4. ↑ Caute p 225
  5. ↑ Weiler A. H. (15 December 1963). "Local Views: 'Odd' Sale: Paramount Acquires Neil Simon Play—Schary 'Ceremony'—New Team". New York Times. p. 123.
  6. ↑ Ebert, Roger (2 October 1969). "Robert Mitchum: My heart flies where the wild goose flies". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 1 November 2020.
  7. ↑ Secret Ceremony (1968), IMDb.com, retrieved 18 November 2020
  8. 1 2 Secret Ceremony, Reelstreets.com, retrieved 18 November 2020
  9. ↑ Movie-Walks: Secret Ceremony (1968), retrieved 18 November 2020
  10. ↑ Adler, Renata (26 October 1968). "Screen: 'Secret Ceremony,' Directed by Joseph Losey, Opens". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  11. ↑ Callenbach, Ernest (1 April 1969). "Review: Secret Ceremony". Film Quarterly. 22 (3): 64. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
  12. ↑ Patterson, John (24 October 2008). "Why the new Joseph Losey box-set is a treasure". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  13. ↑ Kehr, Dave (13 February 2012). "Secret Ceremony". Chicago Reader. Retrieved 1 November 2020.

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