Saturday Night Cinema: Secret Ceremony

6

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema feature stars my favorite hunk o' man, Robert Mitchum. But star power abounds in the strangely facsinating "Secret Ceremony," with glam queen Elizabeth Taylor playing opposite the otherworldly Mia Farrow.

"….this psychologically twisted tragedy begins when the boozy prostitute
Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) encounters a young woman on a London bus.
Cenci (Mia Farrow) looks very much like Leonora's late daughter. The two
lonely women start talking and seem to get along quite well, so Cenci
invites Leonora to stay at her house."

Story continues below advertisement

 

Screen: 'Secret Ceremony,' Directed by Joseph Losey, Opens:Elizabeth
Taylor and Mitchum Featured 5 Other Movies Begin Local Engagements NY TImes, October 24, 1968

"SECRET CEREMONY," which opened yesterday at the Sutton and New
Embassy Theaters, is Joseph Losey's best film in years—incomparably
better than "Accident." The opulent, lacquered decadence works well this
time, with Mia Farrow as a rich, mad orphan, whose mother Elizabeth
Taylor pretends to be and, in effect, becomes. Robert Mitchum is good as
Miss Farrow's stepfather, in a relationship as violent and complicated
as relationships in movies like "Accident" and "Reflections in a Golden
Eye" tend to be. The lines are spoken so slowly, with such long pauses
in between (it is as though a speech guidance drama class were reciting
immortal iambic pentameters) that one thinks for a time that all this
affectation is going to be unbearable.

But there is something not at all arbitrary and far-out at the heart
this time, with people — essentially confidence men—drawn into the frank
needs of the insane, until their confidence roles become a personal
truth about them.

Miss Farrow takes a lot of sleeping pills with a glass of milk. (I
wish a presence as delicate as hers were allowed to play somebody normal
for a change; from Rosemary, the lapsed Roman Catholic neurotic, to
this doomed, loony child must be a harrowing professional route.) But
there is something about people who have become addicted to other people
standing by them beyond some outer limit of rejection and yet
abandoning them just one minute too soon—well, in all the elaborate
fetishism and dragging prose, there is a touching story of people not
helping enough. There is also a ceremonial quality—coffins like cribs,
parallelisms, people reunited in death—that turns crude and embarrassing
at times; although I don't usually like this colored genre of sick
ritual film, I rather liked this one.

Miss Taylor, as the role requires, is far more rotund in "Secret
Ceremony" than she has ever been. Robert Mitchum is thinner than usual.
Peggy Ashcroft and Pamela Brown are excellent, as a pair of bohemian,
masculine, stealing aunts who run an antique shop. There are longueurs,
but not beyond endurance.


SECRET CEREMONY, screenplay by George Tabori, based
on a short story by Marco Denevi; directed by Joseph Losey; produced by
John Heyman and Norman Priggen; a Universal Pictures Limited/World Film
Services Limited/Paul M. Heller Production presented by Universal
Pictures. At the Sutton Theater, Third Avenue and 57th Street, and the
New Embassy Theater, 46th Street and Broadway. Running time: 109
minutes.

Leonora . . . . . Elizabeth Taylor

Cenci . . . . . Mia Farrow

Albert . . . . . Robert Mitchum

Aunt Hilda . . . . . Pamela Brown

Aunt Hannah . . . . . Peggy Ashcroft

 

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prestigio
prestigio
10 years ago

velly interesting
violet taylor playing a prosty
when she was
a highly compensated one
her arrogance went even further
when she expressed political opinions
needless to say
beth taylor never qualified
to any respectable
intelligence level
and that is well known
and been hidden by the msm
for decades

dave
dave
10 years ago

so where’s burt lancaster

Ted Rohe
Ted Rohe
10 years ago

Cool. I’ll have to check it out. In the mood for an unusual film.

f
f
10 years ago

Really weird film. Lovely house tho.
o/t Re the two young girls acid attack:
Preacher ‘shot after acid attack’ http://www.solihullnews.net/news/uk-news/2013/08/11/preacher-shot-after-acid-attack-105074-33714444/
Everything it touches, it ruins. Evil

f
f
10 years ago

The bloodless war. Slowly but surely they are ripping the soul out of the UK whilst the trusting comatosed folk continue to slumber on.
Brussels replaces royal crest on UK birth certificates with euro logo – against ministers’ wishes: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2388384/EU-flag-set-replace-royal-crest-British-birth-certificates-despite-ministers-bid-block-move.html
‘Against ministers wishes’….what a load of tosh, they are all in on it. Not a decent honest man or women amongst them all – traitors the lot of them.

herewegoagain
herewegoagain
10 years ago

Imran Awan ‏@ImranELSS
@TellMamaUK I do hope that the Gov’t taskforce on extremism takes my advice and also looks at online Islamophobia! 3:30 PM – 10 Aug 13

to:
TellMAMAUK ‏@TellMamaUK
@ImranELSS: Agree, totally agree, that is one of its engines that needs to be tackled. 3:35 PM – 10 Aug 13

(I hope they don’t. I hope they have the sense to see through the smoke and mirrors, and identify the hidden agenda behind the scholarly veil of deceitful advice. I won’t hold my breath.
Reality is, this is all about invoking ‘Sharia’ via the back door using ‘islamophobia’ as a tool to outlaw debate (and dissent) from non-muslims.
Pffft, at the self-inflated puffed-up CVs/Biogs as long as your arm (eyes glaze-over after 1st para), a trait with inflated egos.
They say they are (muslim) ‘experts’ in ‘preventing extremism/experts on muslims and terrorism’ etc etc – yet they all appear to be totally and utterly preoccupied with non-muslims (who they label as ‘extremists’), ordinary law abiding people, genuinely concerned about an ideology infiltrating their country(s) and installing the blood-soaked iron fist of Sharia Law. Since when did it become ‘extreme’ to be concerned about a reality. No doubt more hard-working taxpayers £’s are lining the coffers of those who are trying to strip away yet more freedoms from the English, to suit their agenda.
If our politicians continue to be ‘guided’ by, muslims with hidden agendas/islamists and MBH affiliates, then the people in Britain need to wake up pretty soon, before it is too late.)

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Thanks for sharing!