The woman out of nowhere

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Movie
German title The woman out of nowhere
Original title Secret ceremony
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1968
length 105 minutes
Rod
Director Joseph Losey
script George Tabori , based on a story by Marco Denevi
production John Heyman , Norman Priggen for Universal Pictures and World Film Services
music Richard Rodney Bennett
camera Gerry Fisher
cut Reginald Beck
occupation

The Woman from Nowhere is a British fiction film ( psychological thriller ) directed by Joseph Losey from 1968. The film is an adaptation of the short story Ceremonia Secreta by the Argentine writer Marco Denevi and was produced for Universal Pictures and World Film Pictures.

action

The place of action is London, time the present. The prostitute Leonora lost her daughter a few years ago. When she meets the neglected and emotionally unstable Cenci, she is amazed at how much the girl looks like her drowned daughter. Cenci feels the same way with Leonora, because she looks like her mother, whose death she has not yet been able to process.

Cenci takes Leonora into her house and develops a symbiotic relationship with her, in which the two women repeatedly indulge the illusion that the other is the lost love object. The situation takes a threatening turn when Cenci's stepfather Albert shows up. Albert was banished from the house after Cenci accused him of sexually approaching her. A little later she accuses him of raping her. Albert, on the other hand, tries to convince Leonora that Cenci was psychotic and, on the contrary, tried to seduce him. Leonora finally believes him and tries to confront Cenci with this reality. However, Cenci rejects her, goes to Albert, sleeps with him and a little later commits suicide. When Leonora and Albert meet at Cenci's funeral, she stabs him with a knife.

Production and reception

The Technicolor , 35mm film cost an estimated $ 3.2 million to produce . Filming locations were the Associated British Elstree Studios in Borehamwood near London and other locations in London (including St. Mary Magdalene Church in Paddington ) and in Noordwijk, the Netherlands . The main location was Debenham House, built in 1905 in the Holland Park district of London . It was by no means just used as an external backdrop; some of the interior photos were also taken here. You can see in the film u. a. the magnificent Byzantine style entrance hall vaulted with a dome .

The main location of the film: Debenham House in the London borough of Holland Park (January 5, 2015)

Filming began in February 1968, but was delayed because Elizabeth Taylor suffered from constant pain and had to lie down again and again. In this film she plays an undisguised fat woman who - unusual for a film with Taylor - eats all the time. It was her second collaboration with Joseph Losey ( The Servant , 1963); shortly before, she had made the film surf with him and Richard Burton . For her work in The Woman Out of Nowhere , she received a fee of $ 1 million; Mitchum got $ 150,000 and Mia Farrow, who had previously starred in Roman Polanski's horror film Rosemary's Baby , got $ 75,000.

The film premiered in the United States on October 23, 1968. It was first seen in Germany on February 21, 1969. In Germany the film was cut in a 105-minute cut, in the USA it was 109 minutes long.

Awards

Film composer Richard Rodney Bennett was nominated for the 1970 British Film Awards in the category of best film music ; Mia Farrow was nominated for best actress in the same context.

Reviews

The Evangelische Film-Beobachter accuses the work of containing a “study that is not easily accessible in terms of content”, which captivates more “through great actors and stylish staging”, but sums up that the film is to be recommended to interested adults as “dark entertainment of high quality " be. The lexicon of international film , on the other hand, is full of praise : "A subtly designed psychodrama, which owes its tension above all to a consequent cinematic formalization."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 91/1969
  2. ↑ Lexicon of international films, rororo-Taschenbuch No. 6322 (1988), p. 1080

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