jery-tillotson-1 After winning an Oscar for her role as the shrieking, voluptuous, vicious harridan in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?", Elizabeth Taylor felt encouraged enough to look for riskier parts where her beauty and star power were deliberately played down. In SECRET CEREMONY, she had one of her most cutting-edge, risky role as the aging, down-trodden prostitute whose little daughter drowns. She meets a strange, mad girl, Cenci (Mia Farrow) who's convinced Liz is her recently dead mother, Leonora and takes her home where both women play a game: Elizabeth becomes Leonara and Cenci has found her mother alive and well. Director Joseph Losey creates a sumptuous world where most of the action occurs in this fabulous Victorian mansion, jammed with striking lamps, toys, dolls, furniture, lighting,etc. IT all contributes to making this an A Plus horror film where madness rules. A haunting musical score, outstanding lighting and camera-work and an unforgettable wardrobe for the star all combine to make this a true cult movie--which was lambasted by critics and audiences at the time of release but has since grown in stature as a treasured art-house classic.

jacegaffney Of all the directors who earned names for themselves in the last century, Joe Losey took disagreeable pretentiousness to levels that made root canal (no, water boarding) look preferable in comparison. Even those closest to him have confessed not to know - short of a monstrous ego - what made him tick. My take is that all the hugger-bugger and obscure pooh-faced pretentiousness was covering over a fundamentally gay outlook (but a MORBIDLY gay outlook) that he believed needed to be wrapped in layers and layers of ornate obfuscation to pass muster as meaningful art.If you think about it, a preponderance of Losey deals with characters who carry dark secrets around with them until an inevitable implosion occurs. The two best are, THE PROWLER (1951), and, surprisingly, MR.KLEIN(1976), with Alain Delon - coming near the end of Losey's run. In these two films, the secrets, the dual identities, are clear enough so that the patented menace and stealthy suggestiveness provide a tone of added interest to the melodramatic proceedings. The converse of this brooding portentousness is MODESTY BLAISE (1966), which, contrary to the world,I believe to be the TRUE Losey, the scared, pretentious man-child finally coming out of the closet - full bore - and making violent sport of secrets and double agents, using the full panoply bag of tricks to express his discontent in the form of liberating high (very high) camp. (Bogarde(as alter-ego) was the director in a refreshingly comic, self-mocking mode.)But the masterful farce atmosphere was a one-term holiday. In retrospect, his greatest critical success, THE SERVANT (1963), made him think that a load of unresolved bad conscience could lure art-house patrons to a life time of devotion to his curious, cork-screw angst. Pinter granted him this. But SECRET CEREMONY (1968) is Pinter without Pinter, closer to trash can Edward Albee, (why did Losey never direct Albee? The two seemed to be made for each other.) This Liz Taylor-Mia Farrow chamber pot play is so bad that even the most dedicated Losey adherents need be restrained from jumping the aisles.NOTE OF PERSONAL PRIVILEGE: Later on in life, I met John Farrow, Jr.. He told me that his one responsibility on the set of the film, SECRET CEREMONY, was keeping the badly bearded Robert Mitchum from disappearing off the premises into one of the thousand and two pubs existing in London at the time.One would BUY the man his own bar to hear from the horse's mouth candid commentary on the shooting of SECRET CEREMONY.Rating: Below a 6 doesn't make the cut in my books. I give it a 5 but really - rating wise - no rating for this sad sack picture is warranted: minus 5.Was this review helpful to you?

boblipton The major talents involved with this movie -- director Joseph Losey and actors Robert Mitchum, Elizabeth Taylor and Mia Farrow, have done some great work and some lousy work -- Mitchum was inclined to phone in performances unless he got interested. But, like many people who get involved with the arts, when they were doing something on the edge, they doubtless knew they could fail -- but a lot of the people here seem to fall into the common fallacy that great talent can never fail -- as if DONOVAN'S REEF is a great film because it was directed by John Ford or A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG was a laugh riot because it was directed by Chaplin. Or that every performance given by Paul Newman was great. Sometimes people make mistakes and the greater the genius, the greater the mistakes.About the only good thing I can say about this movie is that the camera work by Gerry Fisher is excellent and occasionally distracting. After that, everything bogs down because of the idiotic, minimalist story in which nothing is ever really explained -- but the plot is that psycho Mia Farrow's mother has just died so she falls in with psycho hooker Elizabeth Taylor, whose daughter has just died, until psycho step-daddy Bob Mitchum, in a hideous beard and sporting an accent that varies form Irish to Australian to his basic accent, discourses on statutory rape.That's very little to build a hundred-minute movie on and, despite everyone -- except possibly for Mitchum -- doing their best, there are long periods of nothing. Some might look upon these as meditative sequences. I find them boring.So what is the result? You have characters you don't care about doing very little of interest in a cluttered world -- I suspect the set decorator was getting a kickback from prop suppliers -- and the question arises why this was released at all. Answer: because some people would go to see it based on the track record of the major talent involved and even if the project would not show a profit, at least the loss would be ameliorated.... and forty years later some money is still being picked up by showing it on cable TV.

jotix100 Two wounded and lonely women come together under strange circumstances. Leonora, an aging prostitute, had witnessed her young daughter die. She is a woman with a wounded heart because the guilt she carries. Cenci, the younger woman, is in denial from the loss of her mother. Both are deeply disturbed persons who, as fate would have it, will be united in a stately house in London.Cenci, who has been spying on Leonora, decides she is her dead mother; both have a striking resemblance, so it's easy to see the confusion in Cenci's state of mind. Leonora, decides to go along in the ruse because she sees the possibility to cash on a situation that has been thrown in her lap. Leonora, though, is not prepared for the arrival of Albert, the late mother's estranged husband, and who is ultimately her downfall.Albert, we discover, has taken advantage of Cenci's vulnerability. He is a predator with incestuous desires for the step-daughter that comes his way when he married the late Margaret. Cenci has been turned off by his advances, but as the man reappears in her life, she sees the fictional world she has built around herself come crashing down. When confronted with reality she reacts violently against Leonora, who has no other choice but to leave the strange household she has been drawn into. Cenci will prove too weak to cope with all that befalls her.We read the original short story in which the film is based years ago. The adaptation by George Tabori of the Marco Denevi tale gets an excellent treatment in the hands of Joseph Losey, a brilliant director in his own right.Elizabeth Taylor got a good opportunity in which to excel. Her Leonora is one of her better roles of that period of her career. Mia Farrow also was a promising talent who surprises with her take on Cenci. Robert Mitchum is Albert, the lecher that abused his step daughter and marked her for life. Peggy Ashcroft and Pamela Brown are quite effective as Cenci's eccentric relatives.