Secret Ceremony

''Secret Ceremony'' is a 1968 British 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

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.

File:Debenham House (35482927182).jpg, Debenham House
File:St Mary Magdalene's Church, Warwick Estate, Paddington, London W2 - geograph.org.uk - 297563.jpg, St Mary Magdalene Church
File:Monument to the Molyneux Family.jpg, Kensal Green Cemetery
File:Chepstow Road, London W2 Geograph-1916059-by-Derek-Harper.jpg, Chepstow Road corner shop
File:Huis ter Duin, Noordwijk (ca. 1930).jpg, 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.

Home media

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released ''Secret Ceremony'' on VHS on 31 October 2000 as part of their Universal Treasures line.

Kino Lorber issued a North American Blu-ray edition of the film on 21 April 2020. The British distributor Powerhouse Films subsequently released a Blu-ray in the United Kingdom.

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'' 964 but the style is entirely Losey's own, a return to the crystalline ellipses of ''Accident'' 967after the opulent undulations of '' Boom!'' 968 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:

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

Footnotes

Sources

*
*
*
*
*
*

External links

*

Secret Ceremony
at the British Film Institute
*
*

{{Joseph Losey

1968 films
1968 drama films
1960s British films
1960s English-language films
1960s thriller films
British psychological horror films
British thriller films
Films about prostitution in the United Kingdom
Films based on Argentine novels
Films directed by Joseph Losey
Films scored by Richard Rodney Bennett
Films set in London
Films shot at Associated British Studios
Universal Pictures films
English-language horror films
English-language thriller films