**SPOILERS** Psychological drama that has to do with two women who can't bring themselves to accept the deaths or a loved one and go into a mutual fantasy existence playing the parts of the persons that each of them grieve for. Cenci, Mia Farrow, has never got over the death of her mother who after suffering for some three years from an unknown or unnamed illness finally killed herself by downing an entire bottle of sleeping pills.
Spoting this woman on a city bus who looks a lot like her deceased mother Cenci becomes so infatuated with her that she follows the women into a local Catholic Church where she goes to confession. After trying to get away from the pesky young girl the woman whom we later find out to be a street hooker named Leonora Garbowski, Elizabeth Taylor, gives into Cenci's fantasies of being her dead mother. So that instead of spending her life in cheap flea bag hotel rooms she can have a decent place to live, Cenci's huge Gothic mansion. At the same time Leonora starts to fantasize herself about Cenci being her daughter Judith who died or disappeared five years ago at the age of 10.
Everything couldn't be better for the two women who feed of each others tragedies by trying to outdo themselves in who suffered the most until Cenci's step-father Albert, Robert Mitchum,shows up unexpectedly from the US. Albert a Philadelphia college professor is also somewhat of a sexual psycho who despite his strange vow, only to himself, of being celibate is at the same time sexually attracted to young girls, some as young as 10 years old. this attraction had him always on the run, or one step ahead, from the law during his entire time in the states. Albert shows up at the mansion sporting this atrocious leprechaun beard that even he's embarrassed with, did he need it to disguise himself from the cops looking for him. Thankfully he has it shaved off after five or so minutes of screen time.
With Lenora knowing that her charade of being Cenci's mother is about to be exposed, by step-father Albert, she goes to stay at a fancy waterfront,on the English channel, hotel until Albert leaves. Lenora is then confronted with Cenci's mental deterioration where she becomes even more stranger and off-the-wall then she already was in the movie. Faking that Albert raped her and then, in what seems like a few days later, making believe that she's some eight months pregnant has Leonora completely lose it. In the conflict between the two unstable women Cenci finally realizes that she's, Lorona, not her mother and in effect attempts to kill herself like her real mother did with a bottle full of sleeping pills!
Everything goes to pot for poor Cenci as she in effect throws Leonora out of her house only to ask her back moments later and then succumbs from the effects of her swallowing the sleeping pills overdosing and dying from them. Albert who for all the bad things in the movie that's said about him is really a somewhat decent guy, especially after he shaved off that silly beard he was wearing. Albert never as much as made, it must have taken everything that he had in him, a real sexual move on Ceni ends up with a knife in his gut courtesy of Lorona at Cenci's funeral as the movie "Secret Ceremony" finally comes to an end.
Very strange movie that has it's high as well as low moments with one of them, the highs, having Elizabeth Taylor for once looking really sexy. That beach scene with her wearing a low-cut dress is a real turn on where she's as hot as she was in "The Sandpiper" back in 1964 with her husband actor Richard Burton.
Spoting this woman on a city bus who looks a lot like her deceased mother Cenci becomes so infatuated with her that she follows the women into a local Catholic Church where she goes to confession. After trying to get away from the pesky young girl the woman whom we later find out to be a street hooker named Leonora Garbowski, Elizabeth Taylor, gives into Cenci's fantasies of being her dead mother. So that instead of spending her life in cheap flea bag hotel rooms she can have a decent place to live, Cenci's huge Gothic mansion. At the same time Leonora starts to fantasize herself about Cenci being her daughter Judith who died or disappeared five years ago at the age of 10.
Everything couldn't be better for the two women who feed of each others tragedies by trying to outdo themselves in who suffered the most until Cenci's step-father Albert, Robert Mitchum,shows up unexpectedly from the US. Albert a Philadelphia college professor is also somewhat of a sexual psycho who despite his strange vow, only to himself, of being celibate is at the same time sexually attracted to young girls, some as young as 10 years old. this attraction had him always on the run, or one step ahead, from the law during his entire time in the states. Albert shows up at the mansion sporting this atrocious leprechaun beard that even he's embarrassed with, did he need it to disguise himself from the cops looking for him. Thankfully he has it shaved off after five or so minutes of screen time.
With Lenora knowing that her charade of being Cenci's mother is about to be exposed, by step-father Albert, she goes to stay at a fancy waterfront,on the English channel, hotel until Albert leaves. Lenora is then confronted with Cenci's mental deterioration where she becomes even more stranger and off-the-wall then she already was in the movie. Faking that Albert raped her and then, in what seems like a few days later, making believe that she's some eight months pregnant has Leonora completely lose it. In the conflict between the two unstable women Cenci finally realizes that she's, Lorona, not her mother and in effect attempts to kill herself like her real mother did with a bottle full of sleeping pills!
Everything goes to pot for poor Cenci as she in effect throws Leonora out of her house only to ask her back moments later and then succumbs from the effects of her swallowing the sleeping pills overdosing and dying from them. Albert who for all the bad things in the movie that's said about him is really a somewhat decent guy, especially after he shaved off that silly beard he was wearing. Albert never as much as made, it must have taken everything that he had in him, a real sexual move on Ceni ends up with a knife in his gut courtesy of Lorona at Cenci's funeral as the movie "Secret Ceremony" finally comes to an end.
Very strange movie that has it's high as well as low moments with one of them, the highs, having Elizabeth Taylor for once looking really sexy. That beach scene with her wearing a low-cut dress is a real turn on where she's as hot as she was in "The Sandpiper" back in 1964 with her husband actor Richard Burton.