/ 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.
