There is, of course, a clue in the name of the character played by Mia Farrow but how many Joe Publics did the producers expect to be hip to the rarely performed five-act play by Percy Bysshe Shelly or the story on which it was based. On the other hand those same producers do appear to be targeting a pretty hip audience; for example practically every comment posted here refers to the Liz Taylor character as a prostitute yet in the version I watched there is no mention, visible evidence, or even a hint of whether or not she even has any kind of job nor any explanation of why she allows herself to be picked up by Mia Farrow or why she is apparently free to abandon her home indefinitely. In short it's the kind of film where the audience must take this kind of sloppiness plus the odd snatch of Pinteresque non sequiter punctuated dialogue in its stride. On the plus side the acting is excellent as is the camera work.

Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) has been walking about in a haze of grief ever since her 10 year-old daughter drowned five years ago. On the way to visit the child's grave, a strange young woman named Cenci (Mia Farrow) begins following Leonora, eventually explaining that Leonora looks like Cenci's recently deceased mother. Leonora sees a certain resemblance to the woman that her daughter might have grown up to look like in Cenci, and realizing that Cenci has more than a few screws loose, the older woman decides to move into Cenci's opulent home to look after her. The two spend time in a giant bed and a giant bath tub, but Cenci's bizarre behavior continues to get worse, a situation that is exacerbated by the arrival of Cenci's lascivious stepfather Albert (Robert Mitchum).

How a movie this bizarre, one that struggles so much to be outrageous and push the new freedoms of the time in cinema, can still end up being so boring and dull, is a real testament to director Losey. Farrow is going through the wide-eyed, fragile waif period of her career, which is in full effect here. I So I mainly watched this for Mitchum, but even he's pretty terrible, with a shoddy accent that only accentuates the lurid absurdity of his "shocking" discussions of incest or measuring the sexual arousal of hamsters as they watch Jean Harlow movies (No, that's really part of the dialogue!). Turner Classic Movies timed the showing right, playing it as a TCM Underground entry, and I can see this having a fervent, if misguided, cult following thanks to the general silliness of it all. But for me it was just a boring slog of "Ooo, look how naughty we're being!" dialogue and ham-fisted psycho-babble encased in a poorly-acted waste of time. You get a lot of that in 60s movies as film shakes off the shackles of the production code era for good.

Joseph Losey who had blacklist troubles in the USA, came over to the UK and did such great films as The Servant and King & Country. But he came up short with Secret Ceremony of which I still am trying to figure out just what was happening.

Elizabeth Taylor plays an aging prostitute for whom Mia Farrow gets fixated on, thinking Liz is her mother. Since Liz lost a child herself that works out well because the two at first fill a symbiotic need for family. And as Mia is one wealthy heiress Liz is thinking she's hit the jackpot.

There are some dissenters however. Two of whom are aunts Peggy Ashcroft and Pamela Brown. To them Taylor says she's the American cousin of Mia's mom. Then there is the sinister Robert Mitchum who replete with beard that makes him look like a leprechaun on weed, who is her estranged stepdad. He knows there ain't no American cousin. And Mitchum is a big part of the cause of Mia's psychosis.

According to Lee Server's fine book on Robert Mitchum, old rumple eyes got the part on the recommendation of Roddy McDowell to his friend Liz Taylor. It only involved a few scenes for Mitchum who sauntered through the part rather indifferently. Part of the reason he got it was Mitchum's uncanny ear for dialect and he goes in and out of an English accent which was proof positive of his indifference to the film. What he did enjoy was the company of Liz Taylor and her roistering husband Richard Burton. Those were two legendary drinkers, Mitchum and Burton and they really enjoyed night after night seeing who could drink who under.

Secret Ceremony will never rate on the top of any of the three main players film resume. Nor will director Joseph Losey be acclaimed for this one in the future.