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Secret Ceremony is a 1968 British drama-thriller film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum.

Secret Ceremony
Directed by	Joseph Losey
Screenplay by	George Tabori
Based on	Ceremonia secreta by Marco Denevi
Produced by	John Heyman Norman Priggen
Starring	Elizabeth Taylor Mia Farrow Robert Mitchum
Cinematography	Gerry Fisher
Edited by	Reginald Beck
Music by	Richard Rodney Bennett
Color process	Technicolor
Production company	World Film Services
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release dates	October 23, 1968 (1968-10-23) (United States) June 1969 (1969-06) (United Kingdom)
Running time	109 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$2,450,000[1]
Box office	$3 million (US/ Canada rentals)[2]

Plot

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 apartment of her bedroom, listlessly hitting the cord of a ceiling lamp, reciting a poem about perseverance.

Cast

• Elizabeth Taylor as Leonora
• Mia Farrow as Cenci
• Robert Mitchum as Albert
• Peggy Ashcroft as Hannah
• Pamela Brown as Hilda

Rest of cast listed alphabetically:

• Robert Douglas as Sir Alex Gordon
• George Howell as First Cleaner
• Penelope Keith as Hotel Assistant
• Roger Lloyd Pack as Cleaner
• Angus MacKay as Vicar
• Michael Strong as Dr. Walter Stevens

Production

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.[3]

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.[4]

Locations

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.[5][6] The hotel and beach scenes were shot around the Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.[6][7]

• 
  Debenham House
• 
  St Mary Magdalene Church
• 
  Kensal Green Cemetery
• 
  Chepstow Road corner shop
• 
  Hotel Huis ter Duin as it looked at the time

Reception

Secret Ceremony has divided critics since its release. 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."[8] 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.[9] 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."[10] Similarly, 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."[11]

References

External links

Media related to Secret Ceremony (1968 film) at Wikimedia Commons

• Secret Ceremony at IMDb
• Secret Ceremony at the British Film Institute
• Secret Ceremony at the TCM Movie Database
• Secret Ceremony at AllMovie
• Secret Ceremony at Letterboxd

На других языках

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[de] Die Frau aus dem Nichts

Die Frau aus dem Nichts ist ein britischer Spielfilm (Psychothriller) von Regisseur Joseph Losey aus dem Jahre 1968. Der Film ist eine Adaption der Kurzgeschichte Ceremonia secreta des argentinischen Schriftstellers Marco Denevi und wurde für Universal Pictures und World Film Pictures produziert.

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- [en] Secret Ceremony

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[it] Cerimonia segreta

Cerimonia segreta (Secret Ceremony) è un film del 1968 diretto da Joseph Losey.

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