Sadly Over-hyped

Pretty Good

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I love Elizabeth Taylor. Young, skinny, fat, old. I like every version through the ages. But this is an unmitigated pile of pretentious garbage that eve she can't rescue. Robert Mitchum surely was doing satire of himself. And Mia Farrow, my goodness, she is terrible. She made one good movie her entire career - Rosemary's Baby - and everything else she was ever in she partly or entirely ruined. I'm going to try to forget I ever heard of this movie.

What an unexpected, odd, treat. Films that travel undetected, spotted by accident - as it was in my case. I was reading about this startling Argentinean writer, Marco Denevi, when I discovered that one of his short stories had been adapted for the screen, directed by Joseph Losey of "The Servant" fame and with a cast to die for. 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. This classy if bizarre production also includes Pamela Brown and Peggy Ashcroft in the cast. I enjoyed the weirdness thoroughly. It unsettled me and made me wonder how this film had been received in 1968. Apparently not very well. 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. For lovers of the odd and unique this is a real treat.

"The Secret Ceremony" is a 1968 film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow, and Robert Mitchum. Filmed in England, it's directed by Joseph Losey. 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. It's not much of a role.Losey is responsible for a few whacked-out films but this one takes the cake. It is interesting and disturbing, but if it hadn't been for Taylor, I don't think it would have succeeded as much as it did -- which in my opinion, was very little. Still, Losey films have some fascinating, provocative elements to them, and this one is no exception.

I have liked this film since first seeing it upon its original release. It seems a little slow at times now and I'm really not sure I think very much of any of Robert Mitchum's, for me, lazy performance. In part, I feel this is not just his fault, as I understand that in the original story, some street kids (this was in Mexico) broke in and raped the Farrow character. So in the original her fear and excitement/obsession over sex is caused by this and not by any suggestion of impropriety on the part of Mitchum, playing her step-father. Seems to me this would have worked much better had the original scenario been retained. But never mind, we have what we have and we still have a most spooky and atmospheric movie, with Farrow and Taylor at their maddest, baddest and very best. Eerie location shooting in the art nouveaux decorated mansion and plenty happening to keep the hairs raised at the back of the neck. Unpredictable, worrying and well worth catching