Secret Ceremony is a 1968 British drama psychological horror thriller film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum.

The film ends with Leonora lying in the bedroom of her apartment, listlessly hitting the cord of a ceiling lamp while reciting a poem about perseverance.

[13][14] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Secret Ceremony is constructed on the dualist view of man as a battleground for the twin aspirations of Good and Evil.

In many ways, notably in its insidious illumination of the fascination of madness, Secret Ceremony reminds one of Lilith [1964], but the style is entirely Losey's own, a return to the crystalline ellipses of Accident [1967] after the opulent undulations of Boom!

"[15] Renata Adler in the New York Times wrote that it was "incomparably better" than its predecessor, Accident, and that beneath its "elaborate fetishism and dragging prose, there is a touching story of people not helping enough," but she admitted that the film had its "longueurs, but not beyond endurance.

[17] Writing 30 years later after its release, John Patterson of The Guardian listed Secret Ceremony among the Losey films he dismissed as "woefully misguided material.

"[18] Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader lambasted the film as embodying the director's "worst tendencies as a filmmaker: the movie is cold without being chilling, confusing without being challenging.

ISBN 9780992936440. Dan Callahan at Senses of Cinema suggests that Secret Ceremony’s failures may serve as its virtues, comparing the film favorably to Some Like It Hot (1959) or Duck Soup (1933).