Secret Ceremony
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox film Secret Ceremony is a 1968 British psychological horror thriller film<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> directed by Joseph Losey and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum.<ref name="BFIsearch">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn 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.
PlotEdit
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.
CastEdit
ProductionEdit
DevelopmentEdit
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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
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.<ref name="Mitchum/Ebert">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
FilmingEdit
The production budget for Secret Ceremony was between $2,450,000Template:Sfn and $3,173,212.Template:Sfn 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.<ref name=Reelstreets>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The hotel and beach scenes were shot around the Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.<ref name=Reelstreets /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
- Debenham House (35482927182).jpg
Debenham House
- St Mary Magdalene's Church, Warwick Estate, Paddington, London W2 - geograph.org.uk - 297563.jpg
St Mary Magdalene Church
- Monument to the Molyneux Family.jpg
Kensal Green Cemetery
- Chepstow Road, London W2 Geograph-1916059-by-Derek-Harper.jpg
Chepstow Road corner shop
- Huis ter Duin, Noordwijk (ca. 1930).jpg
Hotel Huis ter Duin as it looked at the time
ReleaseEdit
Secret Ceremony was released theatrically in the United States by Universal Pictures on 23 October 1968.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It premiered in London the following year on 19 June 1969.<ref name=Walker>Template:Cite news</ref>
Home mediaEdit
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released Secret Ceremony on VHS on 31 October 2000 as part of their Universal Treasures line.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Kino Lorber issued a North American Blu-ray edition of the film on 21 April 2020.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The British distributor Powerhouse Films subsequently released a Blu-ray in the United Kingdom.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
ReceptionEdit
Box officeEdit
The film earned approximately $3 million in United States and Canadian rentals,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> with a worldwide total gross of $5,232,905.Template:Sfn
Critical responseEdit
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 [1964], but the style is entirely Losey's own, a return to the crystalline ellipses of Accident [1967] after the opulent undulations of Boom! [1968], and with superb, unexpectedly funny characterisations by the entire cast."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
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."<ref name="Adler NYT">Template:Cite news</ref>
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.<ref name="Callenbach">Template:Cite journal</ref>
Modern appraisalEdit
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."<ref name="Patterson">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
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."<ref name="Kehr">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
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.<ref name=Callahan/>Template:Sfn
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).<ref name=Callahan>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
Callahan writes:
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Leslie Halliwell offers this concise critique: "Nuthouse melodrama for devotees of the director."Template:Sfn
FootnotesEdit
SourcesEdit
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External linksEdit
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