Secret Ceremony

Plot synopsis:
Leonora, a 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 her home.
A resemblance 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 the housekeeper Hannah that Leonora is actually Cenci's aunt.
Cenci is found one day cowering under a table. Albert, her stepfather, has paid a visit. Cenci is terrified of him, claiming that as a child, Albert tried to seduce 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.

Tags: murder

Review:
Elizabeth Taylor as a prostitute that takes advantage of a peculiar girl, played with real zest by Mia Farrow who mistakes her for her mother, and Robert Mitchum, as the disruptor.
The one thing that made people talk about Secret Ceremony at the time was an infamous still with Elizabeth Taylor and Mia Farrow in a bathtub together.
Having come on the heels of another Elizabeth Taylor/Joseph Losey collaboration - the truly awful "Boom" - I suppose the critics were sharpening their knives again.Admittedly, "Secret Ceremony" is probably an acquired taste.
Nevertheless, what remained of the original film was good enough that I sought out the uncut original.The story is bizarre but consistently intriguing, and the Taylor/Farrow combination works.
Taylor is very good in this film; I think it's one of her best performances (her scene at the very end is excellent).
All the characters are either so deluded (crazy rich girl Mia Farrow), desperate (middle-aged hooker Liz Taylor) or demonic (scummy pedophile Robert Mitchum) that watching it is like spending two hours in a psych ward with no attendants on duty.
With wide-angle shots and a minimum of noise, Losey reinforces his characters' isolation and solipsism by making London, one of the most crowded cities in the Western world, seem as empty and quiet as a tomb.The plot is a psychological inversion of the classic haunted house story -- Liz and Mia take shelter from an outside world that threatens their relationship.
Liz indulges Mia's fantasy because as a homeless prostitute she's in need of shelter, plus, she lost a daughter who looked a lot like Mia. This arrangement could be sweet to the point of treacly if these two grown women didn't enjoy doing things like bathing together and discussing ex-lovers.
Joseph Losey's brilliant psychological drama follows the strange relationship between a prostitute(Elizabeth Taylor) and a waif-like girl(Mia Farrow) who resembles her deceased daughter.
Taylor also bears an incredible likeness to Farrow's deceased mother, enabling the two women to create a world of their own where they can live as mother and daughter.
Their secret world is disrupted, however, when Farrow's lecherous stepfather(Robert Mitchum) enters the scene.
"Secret Ceremony" features expert performances from all, but it is Elizabeth Taylor who walks away with the honors, delivering a truly moving portrayal of an emotionally broken woman searching for some stability in her life.
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.
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..
The added twist of Mia Farrow, before Rosemary's Baby, as her daughter, searching for her mother's love.
If you appreciate a movie that accentuates a couple of great actors, in an unusual, intense story, this hits it like no other film.
Taylor reluctantly allows Farrow to take her home, feed her tea and sausages, and slowly comes to fill the role of the dead mother, even dressing in the woman's clothes and confronting some thieving elderly aunts.
The psychological charade is complicated when the two go on holiday as mother and daughter and happen to encounter Farrow's stepfather, played by Robert Mitchum.A fascinating psychological study of two damaged women and their own disturbed inner worlds, SECRET CEREMONY is a great movie for anyone looking for something different.
This is a somewhat weird psychological drama about a mentally troubled young woman (Mia Farrow) who mistakes Liz Taylor's character for her dead mother.
The situation is complicated by the fact that Farrow's character also resembles Taylor's dead daughter.
The film does suffer from several major flaws, most notably the appearance of Robert Mitchum, painfully miscast as Farrow's lecherous stepfather.
There is a difference between not pandering to your audience and completely shutting it out, which is what director Losey has done here (especially regarding Mia Farrow's character and what she is all about).
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.
Young heiress Mia Farrow, living alone in a ornately-designed mansion in England, attaches herself to prostitute Elizabeth Taylor after seeing her on a bus, fancying the coarse woman to be her recently deceased mother (they do look alike!).
Secret Ceremony has an excellent central cast in Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum, but unfortunately it really misses out in the most important area; that being the story, as while the film features a handful of interesting themes and ideas, it never really seems to know what it wants to be and this results in a film that just feels completely pointless and thus will leave most viewers feeling cold.
Things are going quite well for the pair until Cenci's stepfather, Albert, turns up...The source material is a short story, and at over a hundred minutes; I wouldn't call Secret Ceremony a short film, which largely seems to be one of the problems.
Director Joseph Losey (who previously made the underrated Hammer Horror classic The Damned) gives the story too much time and since there isn't actually a lot of ideas; the film does soon start to drone on.
I think Elizabeth Taylor was crazy, and I'm sure Mia Farrow was crazy, and Robert Mitchum was just a jerk.
Mia Farrow is an incestuous lunatic who pretends to be a little girl because her stepfather likes it (apparently), Elizabeth Taylor is a lonely prostitute (a point which was never made clear) who is racked with guilt, and then Robert Mitchum comes in first in this hate-fest as a statutory rapist.
I have yet to understand all that nonsense.Basically, to sum up, if you want to see Mia Farrow try to make love to Elizabeth Taylor, then this is your movie.
But he came up short with Secret Ceremony of which I still am trying to figure out just what was happening.Elizabeth Taylor plays an aging prostitute for whom Mia Farrow gets fixated on, thinking Liz is her mother.
Those were two legendary drinkers, Mitchum and Burton and they really enjoyed night after night seeing who could drink who under.Secret Ceremony will never rate on the top of any of the three main players film resume.
A really bad movie from a respected director with red hot 60s stars, especially Mia Farrow, her first role after "Rosemarys Baby"..
The Excuse of Art. 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.
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.
Grieving the loss of her daughter, beautiful church-going prostitute Elizabeth Taylor (as Leonora) is "picked up" by wealthy psychopathic Mia Farrow (as Cenci).
Coincidently, Ms. Farrow is grieving the death of her mother "Margaret", who looks a lot like Taylor.
The two women form a surrogate "mother/daughter" relationship, with Ms. Taylor moving into Ms. Farrow's beautiful mansion and assuming the parental role.
Taylor, acting in familiar territory, performs well; probably, she received most of the hoots and bad reviews, but she at least helps us understand what her character is about, and how she relates to the confusion.***** Secret Ceremony (10/23/68) Joseph Losey ~ Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow, Robert Mitchum, Peggy Ashcroft.
Strange Is Just the Start of It. Secret Ceremony (1969) *** (out of 4)Extremely bizarre psychological thriller from director Jospeh Losey about the strange relationship between a prostitute (Elizabeth Taylor) and a young woman (Mia Farrow) living alone in a large house.
The Farrow character thinks that Taylor is her dead mother and Taylor sees that the girl resembles her dead daughter and things just grow more bizarre from here.
SECRET CEREMONY is apparently available in a couple versions and most point out that the alternate, studio cut of the film is pretty bad but I'm not sure what the differences are.
Just take a look at Farrow as she stalks Taylor trying to figure out if she's her dead mother or not.
Check out Taylor once she realizes that this strange woman looks like what her dead daughter would have at this age.
Taylor and Farrow deliver some of the best work of their career and the way the two play off another another is something truly terrific to watch.
Secret Ceremony displays Mia Farrow's excellent portrayal of madness.
"The Secret Ceremony" is a 1968 film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow, and Robert Mitchum.
I've seen many of Losey's films, but this one beats them all.It's a very dark movie about a prostitute, Leonora (Taylor) whose daughter drowned.
A young girl named Cenci (Farrow), who somewhat resembles her daughter, starts following her; Leonora resembles Cenci's dead mother -- in fact, Cenci has never accepted her mother's death and thinks Leonora is her mother.
Taylor plays along; she needs a daughter to love, and the girl is wealthy.During a seaside vacation, the emotionally disturbed Cenci becomes a little too emotionally disturbed for Leonora's taste, and the fantasy is threatened.Robert Mitchum plays Farrow's stepfather, a pedophile who had a bizarre relationship with Farrow."Secret Ceremony" is a film about unresolved relationships -- Cenci's unresolved relationship with her late mother, Leonora's unresolved relationship with her late daughter, as well as her guilt, and how both women try for closure using one another.Bizarre isn't the word!
The very beautiful Taylor is top-notch and wears some great outfits (and in fact, she's the only reason I watched this film); Farrow plays the waif she perfected in "Rosemary's Baby." Mitchum is miscast as Cenci's stepfather - he slips in and out of an approximation of a British accent and doesn't seem too comfortable.
I'll chose to believe everyone wanted to help launch Mia Farrow's spooky movie by releasing a similar film at the same time.
That's my standard for recommending this movie: if you actually liked Rosemary's Baby, rather than just appreciated it, then you can feel free to watch Secret Ceremony.Elizabeth Taylor's daughter is dead, and Mia Farrow's mother is dead.
Robert Mitchum costars as Mia's stepfather, but unless he, too, wanted to support Rosemary's Baby, I don't know why he agreed to be a part of this movie.This movie is so strange, awful, and convoluted, it makes the 1968 horror flick seem like a Mister Rogers' episode.
Mitchum Liz and Mia. Elizabeth Taylor starred along with Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum in this campy drama filmed in England in 1968.
Liz is a lady of the night who meets an extremely strange young woman played by Mia Farrow.
I saw "the girl in the park" yesterday and although it featured Sigourney Weaver's moving performance ,I couldn't help but be struck by the similarities with Losey's forgotten movie: Sigourney Weaver was in search of a long lost daughter whereas Mia Farrow is in need of a mother.Farrow is impressive in her performance which was outstripped by the success of "Rosemary's baby" -in which she is terrific too-.As soon as we see her ,we feel how irrational she is.Her smiles,her gentleness ,her tenderness have something spooky.Ther's also an attic where the characters try to invent a brand new past for themselves.Liz Taylor and Robert Mitchum are as good as Farrow and the movie is one of Losey's sleepers,almost in the same league as his overlooked "Monsieur Klein" (another case of mistaken identity).
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.
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.
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.
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!
Mia Farrow is a deranged girl who latches on to aging hooker Elizabeth Taylor, claiming Taylor's actually her dead mother.
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.
SECRET CEREMONY is far more successful than BOOM!, Taylor's previous collaboration with director Losey..
Farrow refused to film her big love scene with Mitchum, so it was cut and note how a convenient (and gargantuan) sponge is always floating in front of Taylor in her bathtub scene.
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.
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.
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 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.