User Reviews

Whatever one may say about it - obscure (and obscurely-titled), deliberately-paced and exasperating - there's no denying the hold the film has on receptive viewers. Not quite in the same league as Losey's THE SERVANT (1963) or ACCIDENT (1967), similarly compulsive - and vague - examinations of relationships (though some may disagree, given that Leonard Maltin rates it ***1/2 while the www.cultmovies.info website even goes all the way and awards it ****!), but it's certainly a film which should have received greater exposure over time; I only know of one late-night broadcast on Italian TV some years back, which I had missed.

Needless to say, this is a dialogue-driven film (though the audio on Universal's no-frills R2 DVD comes off muffled on occasion) and George Tabori's adult script provides many a juicy line for the actors (particularly Robert Mitchum) to sink their teeth in. Not surprisingly, the film features quite a bit of mirror imagery - which is in keeping with the prevalent doppelganger theme. There is, however, an unusual emphasis on religion: Taylor is a devout churchgoer (despite being, ostensibly, a streetwalker!) and often takes recourse in praying.

Elizabeth Taylor was at her artistic peak during this time (resulting in one of her most controlled and less annoying performances) - though her real-life obsession with fashionable clothes and elaborate hairstyles proves a distraction alongside the psychological analysis (on the lines of Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA [1966]) the director is striving for! Mia Farrow as Taylor's surrogate child-like daughter is no less impressive here than her astonishing turn in ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968). Mitchum's role - which has a dash of CAPE FEAR (1962) in it - is arguably the most unusual he's ever played (even more so than his unforgettable mad preacher in THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER [1955], in my opinion!) and, while I'd be interested to know what he really thought about the whole thing, his leering and abusive (verbally to Taylor and physically to Farrow) interloper certainly lends the film an added charge of tension - not to mention another possible mode of interpretation! Pamela Brown and Peggy Aschroft are Farrow's elderly eccentric aunts - unacknowledged by the family (being related to Taylor's deceased first husband, whom they idolize), they have resorted to kleptomania on their rare visits to the mansion!

A couple of confrontation scenes - between Taylor and the greedy relatives and, later, between Mitchum and Taylor at the holiday resort - are very well-handled and emerge as highpoints of the film. Ditto for the sequence in which Farrow goes bonkers when left alone in the house, bringing to mind the Catherine Deneuve of REPULSION (1965); her death scene, then - calling inaudibly for help after the departing Taylor - is equally harrowing. In this respect, Gerry Fisher's velvety cinematography, Richard Rodney Bennett's delicate yet playful score and Richard MacDonald's artful production design (though, thankfully, Reginald Beck's editing is more or less straight-forward - as it could easily have gone the way of the fragmented style of film-making championed by the likes of Richard Lester and Nicolas Roeg, then coming into fashion!) are the perfect partners in the consummation of Losey's distinctive vision on the screen.

There is, of course, a clue in the name of the character played by Mia Farrow but how many Joe Publics did the producers expect to be hip to the rarely performed five-act play by Percy Bysshe Shelly or the story on which it was based. On the other hand those same producers do appear to be targeting a pretty hip audience; for example practically every comment posted here refers to the Liz Taylor character as a prostitute yet in the version I watched there is no mention, visible evidence, or even a hint of whether or not she even has any kind of job nor any explanation of why she allows herself to be picked up by Mia Farrow or why she is apparently free to abandon her home indefinitely. In short it's the kind of film where the audience must take this kind of sloppiness plus the odd snatch of Pinteresque non sequiter punctuated dialogue in its stride. On the plus side the acting is excellent as is the camera work.

Here, she is a tired two-bit hustler, or as Liz put it, with typical finesse, "I play a dikey prostitute in this one." For the first time in her career, she plays a character who doesn't like men, a middle-aged woman battered by a life on the streets who has come to regard men as her natural enemies… Given her animosity, this is a Taylor triangle with a twist: her character fights a strong Robert Mitchum for possession of a foolish girl Mia Farrow…

A psychological thriller, the movie depicts the fantasy world created by the young girl and the older prostitute… The girl thinks Taylor is her mother, and she brings her home to her once resplendent, now faintly decayed London town house…. The two women, locked away from the world outside, enact a "secret ceremony" in which fantasy mingles with and reshapes reality, and Taylor is only too willing to exchange her role of streetwalker for that of the mad girl's rich mama…

"Secret Ceremony" is a thickly dark, arty movie, and her role is tricky, complex: the hooker must become a big lady… Nervous, agitated and confused in the face of a supply of illusion and reality, Taylor uses her Virginia Woolf number for a role that needs cunning shadings…

"Secret Ceremony" looks terrific (Joseph Losey again going to work on a magnificent dream like house), but this is no triumph for Liz… The role pushes against Taylor stereotype, but she isn't elastic enough to transcend her new-found image

Despite its meaningless title, Joseph Losey's SECRET CEREMONY is a first rate drama. Mia Farrow is a deranged girl who latches on to aging hooker Elizabeth Taylor, claiming Taylor's actually her dead mother. Taylor, with nothing to lose, goes along with the charade, having lost her own daughter five years earlier. Robert Mitchum, as Farrow's lecherous stepfather, comes on the scene and throws cold water on the whole thing. Taylor gives one of her best performances and Farrow is great and really creepy, particularly when she's alone on screen acting out her demented fantasies of being taken advantage of by Mitchum. Mitchum is flat-out weird, sporting a beatnik beard and slight English accent. Peggy Ashcroft and Pamela Brown are a hoot as Farrow's money grubbing aunts. SECRET CEREMONY is far more successful than BOOM!, Taylor's previous collaboration with director Losey.

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.

**SPOILERS** Psychological drama that has to do with two women who can't bring themselves to accept the deaths or a loved one and go into a mutual fantasy existence playing the parts of the persons that each of them grieve for. Cenci, Mia Farrow, has never got over the death of her mother who after suffering for some three years from an unknown or unnamed illness finally killed herself by downing an entire bottle of sleeping pills.

Spoting this woman on a city bus who looks a lot like her deceased mother Cenci becomes so infatuated with her that she follows the women into a local Catholic Church where she goes to confession. After trying to get away from the pesky young girl the woman whom we later find out to be a street hooker named Leonora Garbowski, Elizabeth Taylor, gives into Cenci's fantasies of being her dead mother. So that instead of spending her life in cheap flea bag hotel rooms she can have a decent place to live, Cenci's huge Gothic mansion. At the same time Leonora starts to fantasize herself about Cenci being her daughter Judith who died or disappeared five years ago at the age of 10.

Everything couldn't be better for the two women who feed of each others tragedies by trying to outdo themselves in who suffered the most until Cenci's step-father Albert, Robert Mitchum,shows up unexpectedly from the US. Albert a Philadelphia college professor is also somewhat of a sexual psycho who despite his strange vow, only to himself, of being celibate is at the same time sexually attracted to young girls, some as young as 10 years old. this attraction had him always on the run, or one step ahead, from the law during his entire time in the states. Albert shows up at the mansion sporting this atrocious leprechaun beard that even he's embarrassed with, did he need it to disguise himself from the cops looking for him. Thankfully he has it shaved off after five or so minutes of screen time.

With Lenora knowing that her charade of being Cenci's mother is about to be exposed, by step-father Albert, she goes to stay at a fancy waterfront,on the English channel, hotel until Albert leaves. Lenora is then confronted with Cenci's mental deterioration where she becomes even more stranger and off-the-wall then she already was in the movie. Faking that Albert raped her and then, in what seems like a few days later, making believe that she's some eight months pregnant has Leonora completely lose it. In the conflict between the two unstable women Cenci finally realizes that she's, Lorona, not her mother and in effect attempts to kill herself like her real mother did with a bottle full of sleeping pills!

Everything goes to pot for poor Cenci as she in effect throws Leonora out of her house only to ask her back moments later and then succumbs from the effects of her swallowing the sleeping pills overdosing and dying from them. Albert who for all the bad things in the movie that's said about him is really a somewhat decent guy, especially after he shaved off that silly beard he was wearing. Albert never as much as made, it must have taken everything that he had in him, a real sexual move on Ceni ends up with a knife in his gut courtesy of Lorona at Cenci's funeral as the movie "Secret Ceremony" finally comes to an end.

Very strange movie that has it's high as well as low moments with one of them, the highs, having Elizabeth Taylor for once looking really sexy. That beach scene with her wearing a low-cut dress is a real turn on where she's as hot as she was in "The Sandpiper" back in 1964 with her husband actor Richard Burton.

This movie was to me surprisingly good. I have read the Ralph Benner review and many other user comments, which have been very negative. Given that Maltin has given very positive reviews, I realise that this film is an acquired taste of a movie. You have to be a certain type of person to really like it. As a Liz Taylor fan I do it by default, however, I was not prepared for how good Mia Farrow was here, neither for how effective Mithcum was, and how wonderfully the all interact with other. In all its dark tragic topic, it has a certain absurd humor that completely took me. Some scenes are comically genius, Monty Python couldn't have topped the absurdity of the restaurant scene where Mia Farrow's Cenci enters in an unexpected state with Liz's Leonora swiftly adjusting to Cencis madness.

The DVD-copy of the film I recently purchased, has excellent colour and image quality, which gave justice to Loseys very detailed work with the environment and sceneries. The claustrophobic but yet shielding Victorian house is a secret hideaway for the women who have been deeply hit by tragic events. In their recluse they can revive and live out the relationship they have been deprived of in reality. I don't find their relationship necessarily lesbian, although it is hinted that there are tendencies of sexual role playing of the two (escepically when the "man" arrives in the form of a poignantly seedy and sexually beastly Mitchum). Mia Farrows Cenci is a seductive tease in spite of her absurd black long hair and pale white face. Liz Taylors Leonora is a washed-up prostitute, and I agree with some reviewers that it is a shock to see Liz so plump and bloated, she is actually fatter than in Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolf. But I disagree with for instance Ralph Benner that Liz doesn't convey the role of Leonara convincingly, actually she does a good job in spite of her diffuse accents (Liz penchant for using different accents is a long story probably stemming from the fact that she's been raised in England until eight years old, and often sways from British to American accents in an unpredictable fashion). and when the interaction with Mia Farrow starts, they are both heavenly to watch.

And let's not forget the two kleptomaniac sister-in-laws, vultures of the worst sort and a direct menace to the secret ceremonies of Leonara and Cenci. Pamela Brown and Peggy Ashcroft are deliver two scary old spinsters with no shame.

What is the story all about then; we cope with our tragedies and losses differently, some even drown in the process, some survive but as the other mouse left in the milk bowl, standing on a pile of butter - lonely.

To sum up, a true Gothic feast, mystic, beautiful photography, Hollywood legends and British professionals giving very good performances, haunting scores, and beneath the surface a dark absurd humor.

. . . before "Blue Velvet" rips apart a fake pregnancy which has nothing to do with being afraid of Virginia Woolf. SECRET CEREMONY makes far less sense than the sentence above. This flick is set FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, with some or all of its main characters sentenced to death for being too implausible to be brought to life. Who wants to hear "pot-head Bob" bragging about canoodling his step-daughter as if he's on an ACCE$$ H0LLYWOOD tape or something? Folks who eat up bulimia, incest, suicide, pedophilia, family affairs, pillaged estates, incoherence, child abuse, eating disorders, derangement, ham acting, sleazy creepiness, and the "Ick Factor" to get their jollies no doubt will love SECRET CEREMONY. However, those of us who are NOT perverts will question the sanity of the leads in this film. Certain career decisions can be seen as making "Pacts with Old Scratch." The latter individual has a notorious sense of perverse humor. Sometimes the "price" of such an ill-advised deal might be that your husband will dump you to marry your daughter. Other consequences might see you cursed to spend your declining "Walrus Years" hooked up with a notorious Real Life pedophile. That's why they say, "Be careful for what you bargain."