Cast: Elizabeth Taylor,
Mia Farrow, and Robert Mitchum
Director: Joseph Losey
109 minutes (15) 1968
Powerhouse / Indicator
Blu-ray region B
[Released 25th November]
Rating: 6/10
Review by J.C. Hartley
As
a baby boomer, one must always remember that the cultural totems (I don’t like
the i-word) of one’s own generation, are unlikely to be immediately familiar to
the next, or even the generation after that (if you’re as old as I am). Liz
Taylor, who’s she? But surely not? Surely someone like Taylor who, with her
equally famous spouse Richard Burton, virtually invented the sort of celebrity
that the Kardashians now enjoy, hasn’t faded from the blogosphere? Of course,
celebrity was only part of Taylor’s life. Unlike the Kardashians, and various
denizens of the weird and wonderful shallow puddle of ‘structured reality’
shows, Elizabeth Taylor had a proper job before she ever became a symbol of
excess.
So
fixed is Taylor in one’s mind’s eye, as a big Hollywood star, and mid-career as
a global celebrity, that the actual work becomes obscured. One imagines that, following
her stint as a child star, the only films she appeared in as an adult were
blockbusters such as the ill-fated Cleopatra
(1963), which nearly bankrupted Fox studios and kicked off the whole
Burton-Taylor jamboree. Cleopatra was
actually a box-office success but took years to recoup its budget. It’s also a
terrible film, too long, and rather boring. Far better is Carry On Cleo (1964), which used some of the bigger film’s
left-over sets, has a sexier Cleopatra in Amanda Barrie, and far better
dialogue. Forget ‘Infamy, infamy, etc.’ and relish, ‘This is my cousin, he’s
Agrippa’, ‘Oh yeah? Well I know a few
holds myself, mate!’
Taylor
did make big budget movies, epics such as Giant
(1956), with Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift, after which she is reputed to
have said it was the first time in a film her male co-stars were more
interested in each other than they were in her. But she appeared in films with
smaller budgets, and roles which stretched her as an actress, which were not
always obvious choices for a big star who could presumably pick and choose - a
fading career and the vagaries of the studio contract system notwithstanding.
Films
concerning complex personal relationships seemed to be a particular touchstone
throughout Taylor’s career. There are obvious stand-out moments like Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966), where she
and co-star Burton chew the scenery, winning Taylor an Oscar in the process. Others,
like John Huston’s Reflections In A
Golden Eye (1967) are somewhat less accessible. I remember seeing this
latter on TV in the 70s, and while I picked up on the various sub-texts such as
Marlon Brando’s character’s repressed homosexuality, I realise now it must have
been edited to ribbons for broadcast.
X, Y, And Zee (1972), based on a
novel by Edna O’Brien, sees jilted wife Zee attempt to win back husband Michael
Caine by seducing his younger girlfriend. Boom!
(1968), in which Taylor plays a wealthy terminally-ill socialite visited by the
‘angel of death’ (Burton again), was a box-office bomb, which only film
director John Waters and I seem to have enjoyed. The film was based on a play
by Tennessee Williams and directed by Joseph Losey. I liked this film because I
love Richard Burton, and he gets to say ‘The shock of each moment of still
being alive. Boom!’, in that wonderful voice. And Noel Coward, who turns up as
‘The Witch Of Capri’, is as wonderfully camp as only he could be. Taylor made
two films with Losey: Boom! and this
one, Secret Ceremony. So far, I’ve
concentrated on Elizabeth Taylor, but what about her co-stars? Mia Farrow made Secret Ceremony on the back of her
breakout role in Polanski’s Rosemary’s
Baby (1968), and around the time of her break-up with husband Frank
Sinatra, 29 years her senior. Farrow’s subsequent marital trials and
tribulations make some of the themes of Secret
Ceremony uncomfortably prescient. The other lead in this film is the
always-watchable Robert Mitchum, who never seems to have any qualms about
depicting repulsive characters, having played the rapist Max Cady in the
original Cape Fear (1962).
In
Secret Ceremony, Taylor plays
Leonora, a prostitute. On her way to church after turning her latest trick, she
is followed by a young woman Cenci (Farrow), who confronts her at the grave of
her dead daughter who drowned aged ten years. Seeing some resemblance to her
dead child, Leonora allows Cenci to take her to the ornate house where the girl
lives alone. Cenci treats the older woman as if she is her long-lost mother and
Leonora plays along, not always convincingly. Soon installed in the luxurious
house, Leonora observes the girl play-act a remembered scene of some sort of
sexual encounter, which presumably led to her mother expelling her father from
the house. Leonora also observes a visit
by Cenci’s aunts, who steal items from the house when the girl isn’t looking.
Leonora, masquerading as Cenci’s mother’s cousin, visits the aunts’ antique
shop, stocked with artefacts stolen from the house. The aunts, Hilda (Pamela
Brown), and Hannah (Peggy Ashcroft), explain that their brother Gustav, Cenci’s
real father, died suddenly when Cenci was a child and Margaret her mother
remarried with unseemly haste to Albert (Mitchum), a college professor. Margaret
expelled Albert when she caught him fondling Cenci’s breasts in the kitchen,
then shut herself up in the house where she died of a mystery illness. The
suggestion that Cenci may have been responsible for both parents’ deaths is
never pursued as a plot point. Leonora calls out the aunts for their thefts, and
in a struggle over an antique china doll which the women have purloined the
doll is broken.
While
Leonora is out, Albert, who has been stalking around the house, calls upon
step-daughter Cenci who lets him in. He is sporting a rather dreadful beatnik
beard which he tells the girl lulls the suspicions of his female students, who
think him a harmless old man, allowing him to seduce them. Albert allows Cenci
to cut the beard off after which they share a passionate kiss. When Albert has
left, Cenci in a euphoric state disorders the rooms, and hearing Leonora return
tears her own clothes intimating that Albert has attacked her.
Leonora
and Cenci go on holiday, and Cenci with a doll under her dress pretends she is
pregnant while Leonora plays along with the sham. Albert has followed them and
confronting Leonora insists that while he always had designs on Cenci it was
the girl who took the lead. He explicitly describes her visits to him in his
bedroom, and the massages she gave him. While this story has all the trappings
of a male fantasy, Leonora chooses to believe it. Albert suggests that by
playing along with Cenci’s fantasy world Leonora is colluding in the girl’s
arrested development. Later that night Leonora rows with Cenci, forcibly pulls
the doll from under the girl’s dress and in the struggle, it is torn to pieces. Afterwards, Cenci has a rendezvous with
Albert on the beach where they presumably have intercourse. When Leonora
attempts to make up with the girl, Cenci accuses her of wearing her mother’s
clothes and orders her to leave.
Back
in London, Leonora pays a visit on Cenci in an attempt at reconciliation. The
house is denuded of furniture and fittings and the girl has already taken the
overdose that will kill her. Leonora talks about her own suicide attempt after
the death of her child. As Leonora leaves, Cenci attempts to call her back but
it is too late. Leonora visits the house again to see Cenci laid out in her
coffin, when Albert arrives Leonora stabs him in the heart and kills him. The
final scene shows Leonora back in her tiny flat telling herself the story of
the two mice who fell in a bucket of milk: one called for help and drowned,
while the other paddled around until the morning found it standing on a bucket
full of butter.
So,
a strange film, unpleasant at times, disjointed, but with its themes of
consent, victim-blaming, and sexual grooming, rather in tune with current
times. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, the film-critic providing one of the
commentaries on this disc, notes that a review of the time described it as
Losey’s ‘sick ritual’. The film is based on Ceremonia
Secreta (1960), a novella by Argentine writer Marco Denevi, a work which
apparently reflects that writer’s admiration for Wilkie Collins, author of the
‘sensation novel’ The Woman In White
(1859). I’m not familiar with Denevi’s original story, but what no commentator
seems to have picked up on, and forgive me if I’ve overlooked someone
referencing it, is another source for some of the film’s themes. Farrow’s
character’s name Cenci, surely points toward Percy Bysshe Shelley’s play about
incest and murder The Cenci (1891).
In Shelley’s play, Count Francesco Cenci, a tyrannical patriarch, is implicated
in a homicide, sends his sons to their certain deaths, and commits incestuous
rape against his daughter Beatrice, leading the remaining family members to
conspire in his murder. Is Cenci in the film intended to be both Beatrice and
Francesco, abused daughter and potential murderer? Or is the film just
top-heavy with too many themes and symbols?
A
complex film, this doesn’t quite work, but it’s better to fail from
over-ambition than just go through the motions. The fact that it suggests other
stories or treatments, while stimulating, in the end is counter-productive. The
play-acting between Leonora and Cenci at the beginning of the film, recalls
some of Harold Pinter’s work, not necessarily his collaborations with Losey, The Servant (1963), and Accident (1967), but the game-playing in
theatrical productions like The
Collection (1961), and The Lover (1962).
I’ve scored the film quite high because Farrow is outstanding, and the camera
will always love Taylor. The highpoint for me though is the playing of Pamela
Brown and Peggy Ashcroft as the larcenous aunts. Apropos of nothing at all,
check out Pamela Brown as the wonderful Catriona in Powell and Pressburger’s
classic I Know Where I’m Going
(1945).
There
is a mixed bag of extras on the disc. Audio commentary is by Australian critics
Dean Brandum and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas; Heller-Nicholas being rather disconcertingly
enthusiastic in her greetings from the outset, perhaps because she knows she is
about to have her work cut out for her. The opening credits play against
various green backgrounds, which Brandum describes as a mixture of oil and
water, creating the sort of colourful patterns you see on the road. Presumably
he thinks this is the sort of insight one brings to audio commentary. The green
backgrounds are obviously architectural tiles, of the kind you see framing
mosaics, you can even see the crackle in the glaze as Brandum claims they are
something else; whereupon Heller-Nicholas jumps in and notes that they might
also refer to the tiles decorating the house where most of the action is about
to take place. Things go from bad to worse when Brandum starts to describe the
TV version of the film in which two new characters were added, a psychologist
and a barrister, he seems about to name them and then tails off as the audio is
filled with the sound of him desperately shuffling his notes. Heller-Nicholas
comes to his rescue once again. I’m sure audio commentary isn’t as easy as it
sounds, Heller-Nicholas certainly soared in my estimation, but that was enough
for me.
There
is a subtitled interview with Joseph Losey from the French broadcast Cinema Critique. On this the critic
suggests that Losey as auteur was preoccupied with the impact of society on the
individual, which you could say about any filmmaker I guess; but anticipating
some combination of the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau with Marxist theory
I swiftly moved on. Losey’s son Gavrik in ‘The Beholder’s Share’ gives some
biographical details about his father’s career, and talks about his difficult
relationships with women, which obviously would impact upon his ability to
direct them. He also gives some detail about the screen and scriptwriter George
Tabori. Gavrik notes how Losey’s direction warps time to make the audience
think, and how he makes use of the set as a character in itself. Debenham
House, the Arts and Crafts creation of the architect Halsey Ricardo used in
this film is certainly that. Gavrik suggests that the complexity of Secret Ceremony probably leaves it
feeling incomplete, which is a valid point.
The disc includes the TV version of
the film for NBC which, while cut down from the cinema release, includes extra
scenes shot by Universal with a different director, as a prologue and epilogue
wherein a psychologist ‘explains’ it. I skipped this. There’s the theatrical
trailer, and an image gallery, and another feature which is a new one for me. In
something billed as a trailer with commentary, young Larry Karaszewski presents
‘Trailers from Hell’, in which he comments over what looks like a trailer for
the TV version, while giving some more detail about the vandalised TV cut of
the film. He describes Taylor’s films post-Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as an almost gloomy sub-genre of their own, and
repeats the aspersion, suggested by John Waters of Taylor’s performance in Boom! that she was often drunk while
making them. Commenting on her wayward accent in Secret Ceremony, Karaszewski ignores the fact that the character of
Leonora is play-acting for much of the time, and often slips between her put-on
upper-class English and her natural American.
There’s
no great malice in Karaszewski’s mockery, it’s one way in which youth expresses
the need to become independent of the older generation, which is at least one
sub-text in the complicated scenario of Secret
Ceremony.
