Secret Ceremony

Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) has been walking about in a haze of grief ever since her 10 year-old daughter drowned five years ago. On the way to visit the child's grave, a strange young woman named Cenci (Mia Farrow) begins following Leonora, eventually explaining that Leonora looks like Cenci's recently deceased mother.

Secret Ceremony displays Mia Farrow's excellent portrayal of madness. In fact, her portrayal seems to come so easily to her we were wondering about her own sanity.

There is, of course, a clue in the name of the character played by Mia Farrow but how many Joe Publics did the producers expect to be hip to the rarely performed five-act play by Percy Bysshe Shelly or the story on which it was based. On the other hand those same producers do appear to be targeting a pretty hip audience for example practically every comment posted here refers to the Liz Taylor character as a prostitute yet in the version I watched there is no mention, visible evidence, or even a hint of whether or not she even has any kind of job nor any explanation of why she allows herself to be picked up by Mia Farrow or why she is apparently free to abandon her home indefinitely.

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. The film is based on a short story by Marco Denevi and primarily focuses on the idea of how people handle great loss.

"The Secret Ceremony" is a 1968 film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow, and Robert Mitchum. Filmed in England, it's directed by Joseph Losey.

Two wounded and lonely women come together under strange circumstances. Leonora, an aging prostitute, had witnessed her young daughter die.

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. But, like many people who get involved with the arts, when they were doing something on the edge, they doubtless knew they could fail -- but a lot of the people here seem to fall into the common fallacy that great talent can never fail -- as if DONOVAN'S REEF is a great film because it was directed by John Ford or A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG was a laugh riot because it was directed by Chaplin.

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.

The short story by Argentinean Marco Denevi is bizarre. Losey probably chose to film it to highlight the class differences between a small time prostitute, Leonara (Taylor) and the mentally unstable Cenci (Farrow) who is rolling in money she has inherited from her parents, The subplot of Cenci and her sex-starved and deviant stepfather Albert (Mitchum) is of little consequence.