Plot
While on a bus in London, Leonora, an ageing prostitute, is approached by a waiflike young woman, Cenci, who utters the word "mummy". Cenci follows Leonora to a cemetery where the latter stops to mourn her daughter, who drowned five years earlier at the age of 10. Leonora is taken aback by Cenci's resemblance to her deceased daughter, and hesitantly agrees to accompany the girl to her opulent mansion, where she lives alone. Leonora soon finds that she bears a striking resemblance to Cenci's late mother, Margaret. Although initially unsettled by Cenci's childlike behaviour and need for affection, Leonora agrees to live with her as her surrogate mother.
Leonora hides when Cenci's aunts Hannah and Hilda unexpectedly visit the mansion. The aunts antagonise Cenci while surreptitiously stealing valuable objects, which is witnessed by Leonora. The next day, Leonora visits Hannah and Hilda at their antique shop, lying that she is Margaret's cousin. The aunts tell Leonora that Cenci took care of Margaret through her illness with no help, and that she refused to accept her mother's death. They also reveal that Cenci is actually 22 years old and that Margaret threw out Cenci's stepfather, Albert, after catching him trying to seduce Cenci. Leonora admonishes the aunts for failing to protect Cenci and warns them to stay away from the mansion.
While alone in the mansion, Cenci is visited by Albert. After she trims his beard, he asks her to make the moaning sounds she made while they had sex; she refuses but eventually relents, leading Albert to kiss Cenci. Leonora returns to the mansion to find a shaken Cenci cowering under a sink, and Cenci mentions Albert's visit. Leonora and Cenci later check into a luxurious seaside hotel. That night, when Cenci arrives at the dining room sporting a fake baby bump, Leonora is stunned but plays along with the ruse.
The next morning, Albert arrives and confronts Leonora on the beach, declaring that Cenci is mentally unstable and had repeatedly tried to seduce him. Back in their hotel room, Cenci begins to kiss Leonora's back while giving her a back massage, before Leonora angrily tells Cenci to stop. Leonora then forces Cenci to face reality by ripping off her fake baby bump, sending Cenci into a frenzy. Later, from her balcony, Leonora witnesses Cenci and Albert having sex on the beach. When Cenci returns, she sends Leonora away, no longer seeing her as her mother.
Back in London, Cenci overdoses on pills, intending to commit suicide. Shortly afterwards, Leonora visits Cenci and begs to be allowed to stay in the mansion, but Cenci rebuffs her once again. As Leonora leaves, Cenci collapses to her death. Standing beside Albert in silence at Cenci's funeral, Leonora pulls out a knife and stabs him to death. Lying on her bed, Leonora listlessly hits the cord of a ceiling lamp while reciting a nursery rhyme about perseverance.
Reception
Box office
The film earned approximately $3 million in United States and Canadian rentals, [16] with a worldwide total gross of $5,232,905.
Critical response
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Secret Ceremony is constructed on the dualist view of man as a battleground for the twin aspirations of Good and Evil. Appropriately, in view of its schizophrenic theme, two is the film's magic number: two mothers and two daughters, two aunts, two fathers, two funerals, two baptisms (one actual, one metaphorical when Leonora accepts Cenci as her daughter), and above all, two temples of communion. ... In many ways, notably in its insidious illumination of the fascination of madness, Secret Ceremony reminds one of Lilith [1964], but the style is entirely Losey's own, a return to the crystalline ellipses of Accident [1967] after the opulent undulations of Boom! [1968], and with superb, unexpectedly funny characterisations by the entire cast." [17]
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." [18]
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. [19]
Modern appraisal
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." [20]
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." [21]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "This moody mistaken-identity melodrama quickly becomes a macabre muddle of daft sexual psychosis and suspect psychology when nympho Mia Farrow adopts prostitute Elizabeth Taylor as her surrogate mother after a meeting on a London bus. The return of Farrow's stepfather Robert Mitchum provides this meandering morsel of Swinging Sixties gothic with a suitably off-the-wall climax. [22]
Dan Callahan at Senses of Cinema suggests that Secret Ceremony's failures may serve as its virtues, comparing the film favorably to Some Like It Hot (1959) or Duck Soup (1933). [22]
Callahan writes:
Secret Ceremony is a film that is so bad, so irredeemably, lovably foolish, that it provides the sort of life-embracing laughs many comedies fail to engender…Is there room to include such a film among a great director's great works? Unless we are unnecessarily stuffy, which would miss the point of his career entirely, the answer has to be yes. [22]
Leslie Halliwell offers this concise critique: "Nuthouse melodrama for devotees of the director."
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