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.

Joseph Losey who had blacklist troubles in the USA, came over to the UK and did such great films as The Servant and King & Country. 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. Since Liz lost a child herself that works out well because the two at first fill a symbiotic need for family. And as Mia is one wealthy heiress Liz is thinking she's hit the jackpot.There are some dissenters however. Two of whom are aunts Peggy Ashcroft and Pamela Brown. To them Taylor says she's the American cousin of Mia's mom. Then there is the sinister Robert Mitchum who replete with beard that makes him look like a leprechaun on weed, who is her estranged stepdad. He knows there ain't no American cousin. And Mitchum is a big part of the cause of Mia's psychosis. According to Lee Server's fine book on Robert Mitchum, old rumple eyes got the part on the recommendation of Roddy McDowell to his friend Liz Taylor. It only involved a few scenes for Mitchum who sauntered through the part rather indifferently. Part of the reason he got it was Mitchum's uncanny ear for dialect and he goes in and out of an English accent which was proof positive of his indifference to the film. What he did enjoy was the company of Liz Taylor and her roistering husband Richard Burton. 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. Nor will director Joseph Losey be acclaimed for this one in the future.

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?

This movie is a tad pretentious and muddled, but it'll get under your skin. 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. Also gripping is the atmosphere created by director Joseph Losey, who was considered as a genius in the 60s and is pretty much forgotten today. 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. And that relationship is, to put it mildly, weird. Mia lures Liz into her huge, empty home because she resembles her late mother. 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. And Mia has a particularly repulsive ex-lover in Mitchum, her former stepfather who started molesting the girl in her early teens. Though the experience clearly ripped Mia to shreds, the creep still has some power over her and the film becomes a battle of wills between Taylor and Mitchum. Along the way there's a fake pregnancy, a nightmarish seaside holiday and a visit to Mia's two horrid old-maid aunts. The movie isn't particularly pleasant or coherent, but it does pull off the impressive feat of telling its story the way its characters are experiencing it, and that's pretty damn disturbing when you're dealing with a bunch of warped people. See it, then watch a romantic comedy or something so you're able to sleep that night.