StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Art Vandelay I love Elizabeth Taylor. Young, skinny, fat, old. I like every version through the ages. But this is an unmitigated pile of pretentious garbage that eve she can't rescue. Robert Mitchum surely was doing satire of himself. And Mia Farrow, my goodness, she is terrible. She made one good movie her entire career - Rosemary's Baby - and everything else she was ever in she partly or entirely ruined. I'm going to try to forget I ever heard of this movie.

writers_reign 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.

sunznc Secret Ceremony displays Mia Farrow's excellent portrayal of madness. In fact, her portrayal seems to come so easily to her we were wondering about her own sanity. She plays emotionally disturbed almost too well. Elizabeth Taylor at times may have wondered just what she got herself into by accepting this role. It's even stranger than Reflections in a Golden Eye. She at least uses some restraint and knows her character well. Still, despite the idea that an emotionally disturbed Mia could be helped by a mother figure strongly resembling her own birth mother and despite the fact that actress' both contribute a lot to their roles, there isn't really anything that deep happening here. If anything, the story never becomes too informative. We are given the basics and it never progress' beyond that. What happened to the birth mother? What was the relationship about between the mother and daughter? What is the true role of Robert Mitchum's character? We don't really get anything too descriptive and for that the film just becomes another soapy melodrama with some odd characters. What it really needs is to dig deep and give us more information and we only get small bits and pieces. Despite the odd story, nothing too profound here.

Putzberger This movie is a tad pretentious and muddled, but it'll get under your skin. All the characters are either so deluded (crazy rich girl Mia Farrow), desperate (middle-aged hooker Liz Taylor) or demonic (scummy pedophile Robert Mitchum) that watching it is like spending two hours in a psych ward with no attendants on duty. Also gripping is the atmosphere created by director Joseph Losey, who was considered as a genius in the 60s and is pretty much forgotten today. With wide-angle shots and a minimum of noise, Losey reinforces his characters' isolation and solipsism by making London, one of the most crowded cities in the Western world, seem as empty and quiet as a tomb.The plot is a psychological inversion of the classic haunted house story -- Liz and Mia take shelter from an outside world that threatens their relationship. And that relationship is, to put it mildly, weird. Mia lures Liz into her huge, empty home because she resembles her late mother. Liz indulges Mia's fantasy because as a homeless prostitute she's in need of shelter, plus, she lost a daughter who looked a lot like Mia. This arrangement could be sweet to the point of treacly if these two grown women didn't enjoy doing things like bathing together and discussing ex-lovers. And Mia has a particularly repulsive ex-lover in Mitchum, her former stepfather who started molesting the girl in her early teens. Though the experience clearly ripped Mia to shreds, the creep still has some power over her and the film becomes a battle of wills between Taylor and Mitchum. Along the way there's a fake pregnancy, a nightmarish seaside holiday and a visit to Mia's two horrid old-maid aunts. The movie isn't particularly pleasant or coherent, but it does pull off the impressive feat of telling its story the way its characters are experiencing it, and that's pretty damn disturbing when you're dealing with a bunch of warped people. See it, then watch a romantic comedy or something so you're able to sleep that night.