Reflections on ... Secret Ceremony (1968)

/ Italian movie poster for Secret Ceremony via /

Glittering hedonists Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were the foremost show business power couple of the last century. (I’m sorry, but Kanye and Kim who?). As world-famous and tabloid-friendly as the tempestuous, jet-setting and hard-drinking duo were, the actual films they made together and individually during their marriage were mostly notorious mega-bombs. Some, though, were genuinely interesting and deserve reappraisal. Take, For instance, Secret Ceremony (1968).

Pop culture theorist Camille Paglia has rhapsodized about the impact of seeing Secret Ceremony on its original release. “One of the most spectacular moments of my movie-going career occurred in college as I watched Joseph Losey’s bizarre Secret Ceremony,” she would recall in her essay “Elizabeth Taylor: Hollywood’s Pagan Queen” in the March 1992 issue of Penthouse magazine. “Halfway through the film, inexplicably and without warning, Elizabeth Taylor in a violet velvet suit and turban suddenly walks across the screen in front of a wall of sea-green tiles. It is an overcast London day; the steel-grey light makes the violet and green iridescent. This is Elizabeth Taylor at her most vibrant, mysterious and alluring at the peak of her mature fleshy glamour. I happened to be sitting with a male friend, one of the gay aesthetes who had such a profound impact on my imagination. We both cried out at the same time, alarming other theatregoers. This vivid silent tableau is for me one of the classic scenes in the history of cinema.”

/ A vision in violet: via /

Seen today, peculiar London-set late 1960s psychodramas Secret Ceremony is the type of film John Waters would describe as a “failed art movie” – but that’s one of my favourite genres, and if you’re going to make a failed art movie, make it this wildly baroque, weird and claustrophobic! Screen diva Taylor (at the zenith of her zaftig double-chinned, caftan-wearing era) stars as Leonara, a blowsy middle-aged prostitute tormented by the memory of the death of her young daughter by drowning. One day profoundly disturbed and deluded poor little rich girl Cenci (post-Rosemary’s Baby Mia Farrow at her most waif-like) latches onto her and decides Leonara represents the return of her recently-deceased mother, dragging her back to her haunted art nouveau mansion in Holland Park. Leonora soon clashes with Robert Mitchum as Albert, Cenci’s sexually predatory stepfather. From there things just get progressively more twisted!

/ Elizabeth Taylor: the caftan years (albeit a caftan by Dior) /

/ Frankly psychotic nymphette Cenci. You may find Farrow's performance begins to grate as the film progresses /

Secret Ceremony keeps threatening to turn into a horror movie and never quite delivers – but it is satisfyingly jarring and gothic, nonetheless. Taylor in shrewish bitch goddess-mode is hypnotically compelling as only she can be. At one point, Leonara hungrily gobbles a big fried breakfast and loudly belches – a moment worthy of Divine! There’s a reason Taylor is revered as a campy queer icon! (Cruelly, the film repeatedly draws attention to Taylor’s matronly weight. “I’m so fat!” Leonara wails to Cenci, surveying herself in a mirror. Later, Albert tells Leonara “You look more like a cow than my late wife. No offense - I'm very fond of cows”).  The fragile and intense Farrow hams it up as a demented child-like pixie. Secret Ceremony is effortlessly stolen from them both, though, by the torpid Mitchum, who breathes complexity and humanity into the perverse role of Albert.  

/ Gruesome twosome: Albert (Robert Mitchum) and Cenci (Mia Farrow) /

/ The bathtub scene was apparently considered the hint of depravity in 1968, hinting at both lesbianism and incest /

No spoilers, but out of this freakily dysfunctional trio, only one will survive and they will mutter to themselves, “There were two mice fell in a bucket of milk. One yelled for help and drowned. The other kept pedaling around until, in the morning, he found himself on top of butter”. Watch for the closing credits, which announce Taylor’s wardrobe is via Dior and her hairstyles by Alexandre de Paris. The film is like a lesbianic, female-centred version of director Joseph Losey’s earlier, more celebrated movie The Servant (1963). Secret Ceremony almost certainly suffered at the box office by the failure of the even-more berserk Boom! (1968), the flop film based on a Tennessee Williams play Losey made with Taylor and Burton that same year - another movie I love!

Further reading:

My analysis of the other Elizabeth Taylor / Joseph Losey "failed art movie"of 1968 - the infamous Boom! - here.

The essential Dreams Are What Le Cinema is For blog goes in-depth on Secret Ceremony here.

The Complete Films of John Waters (Every Goddamn One of Them ...): John Waters at The BFI

For London-based sensationalism freaks like me, surely the cultural highlight of autumn 2015 was The British Film Institute’s exhaustive John Waters retrospective It Isn’t Very Pretty: The Complete Films of John Waters (Every Goddamn One of them...) from 1 September – 6 October. The acme of the season saw the Sultan of Sleaze himself jet into London to make personal appearances on the weekend of 18-20 September. And once again I managed to bask in my filth elder’s ambiance.

/ The early years: John Waters and his ultimate leading lady and muse Divine photographed in San Francisco in 1970 /

Courtesy of my film journalist friend Damon Wise (a long-time Waters confidante), I got into the 100% sold-out "John Waters in Conversation" event on Friday 18 September as his “plus one” guest. Waters was interviewed onstage about career (illustrated with well-chosen clips from his films) and then fielded questions from the audience. The “peoples’ pervert” was on scintillating form throughout – the man is a supreme raconteur.

My favourite part of Waters’ onstage discussion: he was asked about the inspiration behind Divine’s striking appearance as bitch goddess extraordinaire Dawn Davenport in his 1974 masterpiece Female Trouble. He explained that while Divine revered Liz Taylor (to the point that Divine smoked Salems - the same brand of cigarettes Taylor was known to prefer - in tribute) and that the fatter Taylor got, the more she actually began to resemble Divine – the real source for Dawn Davenport was the beehive-haired, heavily made-up mother in Diane Arbus’ famous 1966 photo “A Young Brooklyn Family Going for a Sunday Outing, N.Y.C.”

/ A Young Brooklyn Family Going for a Sunday Outing, N.Y.C (1966) by Diane Arbus /

/ Divine as Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble (1974) /

Afterwards Damon smuggled me into The BFI’s elite VIP green room (as you may recall, the last time I was in there I was seated directly opposite Fifties Hollywood heartthrob Tab Hunter –sigh!). Waters was holding court amongst his entourage before introducing a screening of Serial Mom and then doing a book-signing session. (He’s the hardest working man in show business!).  It was a strange and interesting mix of people. Water’s London friends included Helena Kennedy QC (Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws), fuchsia-haired fashion doyenne Zandra Rhodes, talk show host Graham Norton and (most glamorous of all) transgender pioneer April Ashley (with a mane of silver bouffant hair, clad in a flowing green caftan).  I only spoke to Waters very briefly on the Friday night. I told him that when I was in New Orleans in April I made a point of going to his two favourite seedy dive bars – the Corner Pocket (hustler bar where the boys dance on the bar in the underwear – reportedly the inspiration for The Fudge Palace in Waters’ film Pecker) and The Double Play (clientele is mainly trans prostitutes, hustlers, their johns and junkies). “Isn’t the Corner Pocket great?” Waters enthused.

The night of Saturday 19 September saw the high potentate of trash taking the stage at The BFI again (he wore a different striking Comme des Garcons ensemble at every appearance), this time to introduce his freaky and deliciously nasty raw early film Multiple Maniacs (1970). I was accompanied by Mia, part of the duo behind The Amy Grimehouse interactive cult film collective. It’s a sentimental favourite of mine (I first saw it on VHS as a university student in Canada – it truly warped me), sadly unavailable on DVD. The close-ups of Divine – still an embryonic young starlet on the ascent – grinning maniacally and foaming at the mouth and hippie-punk bad girl Cookie Mueller go-go dancing topless are life-affirming sights.  The vomit-eater, bicycle seat-licker, junkie in withdrawal and two men kissing on the lips like lovers in Lady Divine’s Cavalcade of Perversions warmed my heart. And crucially, Multiple Maniacs represents the film debut of the much-loved gap-toothed “outsider” character actress and punk pensioner Edith Massey.

/ Above: David Lochary in Multiple Maniacs (1970) /

/ Joan Crawford in her final film Trog (1970) /

/ John Waters introducing Trog onstage at The BFI on Sunday 20 September 2015. Photo by Pal /

Sunday afternoon I returned to The BFI with my boyfriend Pal to see Waters introduce one of his specially-chosen, personal favourites Trog (1970). (As a kind of side-bar to the main event, Waters curated his own mini-season of his much-loved British films called Teabaggin’ in the Kitchen Sink). I’d never seen Trog before:  the low-budget, ultra-kitsch (and very enjoyable) British sci fi / horror film starring a desiccated and down-on-her luck Joan Crawford (in her last-ever screen role) opposite a guy in a gorilla mask, loincloth and fur booties playing a “missing link” troglodyte on-the-rampage. Crawford is actually majestic in Trog: such steely conviction and professionalism in spite of the mortifying circumstances. We’d been promised that a secret special guest would join Waters onstage afterwards. It turned out to be Trog himself – the man behind the gorilla mask! The role was played by wrestler Joe Cornelius (stage name: The Dazzler). Now in his eighties and very hard of hearing, Cornelius nonetheless looked great in a shiny gold suit (very old-school Vegas showman) and regaled us with stories about the making of Trog - in particular his leading lady. (He was very gracious and chivalrous discussing Crawford – who, he insisted, was not drunk the whole time nor a temperamental Hollywood diva. Apparently she sent him Christmas cards for years afterwards!).

/ Above: Wrestler Joe Cornelius (aka The Dazzler) in his prime /

That Sunday afternoon after Trog represented the last opportunity to see Waters’ rarely-seen early short films:  the Super 8 home movie juvenilia he made as a teenager fired up by the underground cinema of Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger, which we've all only read about in his 1981 book Shock Value. These works are sealed in Waters’ personal vault and almost never get public airings – they represent year zero for John Waters fanatics like me. Frustratingly, The BFI made seeing them as difficult as possible: they were shown in the cinema’s smallest room and tickets were sold on the day in a first come-first serve basis. Managing to get a ticket was the equivalent of winning the lottery! Sadly, the final screening sold out even before I could attempt to queue for the tickets! So I'll probably never see Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964), Roman Candles (1966) or Eat Your Make-Up (1968) now – they will exist only in my imagination! Damon even went to the box office to plead on my behalf – but with no success.

The silver lining: instead, Damon snuck me back into the green room and we got to hang out with Waters again.  This time there were only maybe five of us in there and Waters was on relaxed, loquacious form while he autographed stacks of his books (mainly Carsick) for the BFI's book store and killed time until he introduced a screening of Cecil B Demented later on. I told him I went to see his friend, veteran sex kitten and camp icon Pia Zadora's jazz revue at Italian restaurant Piero’s when I was in Vegas in April 2015. Waters spoke about her with genuine affection and concern (“Did it do well? Did people like it?” Apparently Zadora’s recent residency in Los Angeles wasn’t so successful. I suspect Vegas is her natural habitat).

Interviewed for the September 2015 issue of Sight & Sound magazine to promote The BFI retrospective, Waters had reminisced about how as teenagers he and Divine used to attend Ike and Tina Turner gigs in the sixties when they’d perform in Baltimore and what a big influence feral wigged-out bold soul sister Tina was on his aesthetic. He told us he was flying to Switzerland the following morning for an art exhibit and spoken word gig. Switzerland is, of course, also where retired rhythm and blues tigress Tina now resides. Waters has written about how over the decades he managed to meet most of his heroes: the disparate likes of Little Richard, Nico, Johnny Mathis, Elizabeth Taylor, William S Burroughs. I asked him if he's ever met Tina Turner and Waters exclaimed, “No!” He admitted he’s afraid to in case he's disillusioned - or if Turner was angry with him. Considering Waters has said in the past that Tina was at her best when she was still with Ike, wearing a ratty wig and still had a moustache, Turner’s reaction to meeting him would bound to be interesting. Waters also pointed out for one of his earlier art exhibits he commissioned a conceptual sculpture of a giant Ike Turner manipulating a marionette puppet of Tina. He suspected she wouldn’t see the funny side of that! Finally, we all bade Waters goodbye when the car arrived to take him back to the hotel. It was a truly great end to the weekend.

Postscript: Waters may have departed London, but for me The BFI season properly ended the following Sunday (27 September) when Pal and I went to see Boom! (one of Waters’ Teabaggin’ in the Kitchen Sink selections).

/ Elizabeth Taylor in Boom! (1968) /

“If you don’t like this film, I hate you.” John Waters

Boom! The shock of each moment of still being alive!

It was a real trip to re-visit Boom!, the berserk and baroque 1968 Joseph Losey-directed film adaptation of the flop Tennessee Williams play starring Liz Taylor (in her fleshy, caftan-wearing era) and an alcohol-ravaged Richard Burton. The brawling, hard-drinking Taylor and Burton were reportedly drunk for most of the filming of Boom! (Pal and I got into the spirit of things by downing powerful Bloody Marys beforehand). I’d only ever seen Boom! once before – and that was way back in 2011 when I saw it at The Institute of Contemporary Art with my much-missed late friend Alison. (Alison was a major Liz Taylor fan – I’ll always associate Boom! with Alison).  Trying to make sense of it, I blogged about Boom! at the time. You can read it here. 

Boom! is, of course, one of Waters’ most-cherished films – he appreciates it as a “failed art movie” and has written extensively and eloquently about it and even taken the film on tour, introducing it beforehand. (Famously, Waters once attended a July the fourth party at Liz Taylor’s Hollywood home in the eighties. He made the mistake of telling her how much he loved Boom! Assuming he was making fun of her, Taylor took offence, flew into a rage and shouted, “That’s a terrible movie!”).

Yes, Boom! is awful in many ways, but it’s toweringly, majestically, compellingly bad. It’s mind-boggling. And no one delivers Williams’ most overwrought dialogue quite like Taylor in full scenery-chewing mode. “You can watch [Boom!] a hundred times and never know if Losey meant it to be camp,” Waters has mused. “Camp isn’t the right word. Camp means “so bad it’s good.” This is not “so bad it’s good.” This is so bad it’s art. This is so bad it’s confusing. Or this is so great it’s confusing. You don’t ever know the tone of it. It is, to this day, mysterious to me.”

Further reading: I've blogged about John Waters - one of my key and most treasured inspirations - many times over the years. Read 'em all! My epic 2010 interview with Waters for Nude magazine. When John Waters Met Nico. A Reunion with the Prince of Puke Part 1 (2011). John Waters' Christmas Show at The Royal Festival Hall in 2011. The Amy Grimehouse John Waters Filth Festival in 2014. Reunion with the Prince of Puke Part 2 (2014). Reflections on John Waters' book Role Models. 

Reflections on ... The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (1961)

“Tennessee Williams wanted the lead in The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone to go to Katherine Hepburn, after seeing her performance as the scheming mother in Suddenly Last Summer. But Hepburn, who resented the way her advancing years had been treated in that film, had no intention of inviting comparison between herself and the lonely middle-aged actress who buys the attentions of a male hustler. Although the public was intrigued by rumors of an off-screen liaison between the film’s subsequent stars, Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty, Spring was a disappointment at the box office. It seems that audiences were uncomfortable with the film’s depressing theme, and with the painful similarities between the lives of Vivien Leigh and the mentally unstable Mrs Stone.”

Penny Stalling. Flesh and Fantasy (1978)

If The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (the 1961 film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams novel) is remembered at all today, it’s as a dusty and obscure minor footnote to the career of its leading lady Vivien Leigh (it would be her penultimate film; Leigh died of tuberculosis aged 53 in 1967). It seemingly never crops up on TV and is unavailable on DVD in the UK. As a fan of both Leigh and Williams (and intrigued by Spring’s sordid subject matter!), I had long been intrigued by this curiosity. When the British Film Institute in London held a retrospective season commemorating the 100^th anniversary of Leigh’s birth in November 2013, I finally got to see it.  

/ Make mine a Negroni: Vivien Leigh in The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone /

It certainly feels like a “lost” film. The BFI always sources the best quality prints they can – and this one frequently looked pretty scratchy and moth-eaten. In 1961 the film suffered by comparison with Leigh and Williams’ earlier triumphant collaboration on A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), for which she won her second Academy Award, and it was neither a critical or commercial success. Seeing it in 2013 for the first time, I would argue The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone is ripe for a more generous reappraisal. Williams himself rated it highly, saying, “I think that film is a poem” in his 1972 memoirs (but then he also loved the catastrophic 1968 Liz Taylor-Richard Burton mega bomb Boom!). Call me perverse, but I find Spring infinitely more enjoyable than the more highly regarded Streetcar.

/ Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty in The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone /

The film is flawed but fascinating. It seethes with weird hybrid tensions. With its woman-of-a-certain age in peril heroine, Spring works as a lush old-fashioned conventional melodramatic “woman’s picture” awash with romantic masochism, stoical suffering and deluxe production values (the costumes, sets and Roman setting are pure eye candy). But it also plumbs the depths of some spicy lurid subject matter: self-destruction, sexual humiliation and glittering but empty hedonism in a milieu of pimps and prostitutes in Rome’s La Dolce Vita international cafe society. (Some of Spring’s nightclub and party scenes, with their grotesque celebrants, can be favorably compared to the earlier Fellini film). Intriguingly for modern audiences, the film is shot through with a definite queer sensibility (it’s surprisingly clear that those seeking firm-bodied Roman hustlers on the Spanish Steps are just as likely to be male as well as female; the role of Mrs Stone would probably make even more sense as an older gay man pining for his younger thug lover). It’s also convincingly permeated by a sense of real fatalistic despair almost from the very start (onscreen Leigh’s depression is almost tangible). And in its tense, shocking final moments, Spring packs the dread of a horror film.

/ The original theatrical trailer for The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone /

/ Leigh, draped in haute couture by Balmain /

Leigh portrays the titular Mrs Karen Stone – a recently widowed and affluent middle-aged American actress adrift in Rome.  Rich, lonely and vulnerable, Stone is easy prey for heartless gigolo Paolo (Warren Beatty) and his malevolent female pimp The Contessa (Lotte Lenya). Leigh is only 47 here but it has to be said she seems dramatically older. (And in the context of the story, the age of 47 seems to represent something significantly older than it does in 2013). Draped in haute couture by Balmain (shame about the gruesomely unflattering blonde wigs), she is still waveringly beautiful but careworn, ravaged and fragile. (Late-period Leigh’s deep bass voice may come as a surprise; it was strikingly lower by the 1960s after years of poor health and heavy smoking). 

/ Ladylike and demure - but tortured /

Leigh is so perfect for the role, it's hard to believe it wasn't conceived with her in mind or that she wasn't the original choice. Her thin-skinned and delicate performance is a portrait of someone deeply wounded but striving to maintain a haughty dignity and detached froideur (she boosts her confidence and self-soothes with vice, chain-smoking and drinking Negroni cocktails).  And yet Leigh had a tough core: she was a profoundly unsentimental actress.  Whether as Scarlett O’Hara, Blanche Dubois or the complex and troubled Karen Stone, she never solicits the audience’s sympathy. Considering Spring is her second last film, Leigh ended her movie career on a high. My favorite moments of Leigh’s performance here are probably the simplest: the segments of Stone drifting aimlessly alone through Roman streets like a melancholy somnambulist, severely-etched  and alienated in her ladylike suits, white gloves and cat’s eye sunglasses, are haunting. Thank God Katherine Hepburn didn't accept the role. 

/ Like I said, the film has a genuinely queer sensibility: Warren Beatty wears very tight pants throughout and gets more than one lingering, admiring ass shot /

The film’s weakest link is callow young Warren Beatty, whose thick comedy Italian accent is frankly awful (his acting would improve considerably by Bonnie and Clyde in 1967). Why not cast an actual Italian actor as Paolo? The dark, swarthy and sensual Franco Citti had already smoldered playing sexy low-life pimps in two Pier Paolo Pasolini films, Accattone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962).  Or perhaps the French art cinema heartthrob Alain Delon, who at least was Continental - and by all accounts in real life every bit as predatory and amoral as Paolo! LuchinoVisconti’s bisexual protégé would have invested the part with some of the icy sociopathic menace he brought to Plein Soleil (1960). (In fact Delon had been considered for the role – but Leigh rejected him as “too pretty.” Perhaps she didn't want to share close-ups with him. Who could blame her not wanting to be compared to young Delon?).

/ Don't Smoke in Bed: Two ultra-sultry and homoerotic portraits of very young Delon by John S Barrington, a pioneer of gay beefcake / physique photography. Delon could have played the role of Paolo in his sleep. (Apparently Delon tried to suppress these photos later on. Read the biography Physique: The Life of John S Barrington by my friend, journalist and author Rupert Smith)

It could be argued the film is well and truly stolen from both Leigh and Beatty by the frankly amazing Lotte Lenya, nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as the toxic Contessa (two years later she would play Rosa Klebb in the James Bond film From Russia with Love – her most famous movie role). The 63-year old Austrian actress and chanteuse (the definitive interpreter of her husband Kurt Weill’s songs, name-checked in the English lyrics to “Mack the Knife”) is utterly compelling: she practically purrs with smiling, serene evil. I literally gasped when she calls Stone a “chicken hawk” (a very John Waters moment. I told you this was a queer film). And don’t even get me started on how much I love The Contessa’s apartment. All the sets in Spring are amazing, but her flat – shared with a menagerie of cats - is truly brothel-like, a tart’s boudoir of crimson velvet furniture, flocked wallpaper and gilt.

/ Stirring up trouble: Lotte Lenya as the sinister Contessa. I love her blood-red and gold apartment /

As well as La Dolce Vita, for me Spring echoes Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930) in its themes of sexual humiliation, cruelty and death, and Bonjour Tristesse (1958) for the joyless European jet set debauchery and luxurious settings. The story is full of Tennessee Williams’ essential recurring preoccupations:  loneliness, fear of aging, compassion for human fragility, the need to live with illusions and occupations especially the concept of the beautiful young gigolo doubling as an angel of death (See also: Boom!).

One of Spring’s other intriguing themes is American new world naivety versus European old world decadence. During a heated argument, Paolo spits at Stone, “Rome is 3000 years old. You’re what – fifty?” Later, when someone describes Stone as “a great lady”, The Contessa is contemptuous, arguing there is "no such thing as great American lady" because great ladies do not occur in country less than two hundred years old. Stone is out of her depth in Italy – against the corrupt and damaged likes of Paolo and The Contessa, she doesn't stand a chance.

No spoilers, but Spring also raises the possibility Stone has a death wish or unacknowledged suicidal impulse, subliminally motivating her. Aiming to shock and offend her, Paolo taunts she’ll be discovered dead in bed with her throat slit ear-to-ear by a gigolo three or four years from now. Stone merely laughs “a cut throat three or four years from now would be a convenience”. In a weird encounter on the street with some nosy American acquaintances Stone lies to them that she’s been diagnosed with a fatal illness so that they won’t bother her anymore. In the context of the film, this is fatalistic – she’s sealing her own fate. Even more disturbingly, throughout the film Stone is literally pursued by death – stalked by a completely silent, gauntly handsome angel of death street urchin hustler who at first might even exist only in her imagination. (He’s a very poetic Williams-ian touch: with his wraith-like cheekbones he looks like a Giacometti sculpture come to life and is arguably more attractive than Beatty).  His recurring presence foreshadows certain doom.

“A glamorous world – a strange romance!” the original theatrical trailer to The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone tantalizingly promised. The film offers a kinky glimpse of sex and dying in high society, viewed through a realm of genteel cocktail parties and gold cigarette cases.

/ Ominous: Karen Stone, stalked by death /

Further reading:

This great blog has some beautiful screen shots of The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone's lavish sets and costumes

My reflections on another Tennessee Williams adaptation, the notorious Boom! (1968)

The screenplay for The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone was adapted by Gavin Lambert (1924-2005).  During the making of the film, Vivien Leigh was freshly divorced from Laurence Olivier and struggling with mental illness - and yet was consistently elegant and professional throughout. Read his sympathetic and insightful account of working Leigh here. 

/ "Oh show me the me way to the next pretty boy ...": The incomparable Lotte Lenya (in 1962) singing us out with Kurt Weill's "Alabama Song"