Secret Ceremony

Leonora Grabowski (Dame Elizabeth Taylor), and Cenci Engelhard (Mia Farrow), a twenty-two year old heiress now alone in the world, embark on a relationship of sorts following their chance meeting. That relationship stems from Cenci, who suffers from psychological issues, believing, due to a physical resemblance, that Leonora is really her mother, Margaret Engelhard, who recently passed away. Learning why Cenci has this attachment to her, Leonora senses an opportunity to get out of her low rent life by realizing Cenci's delusion in becoming her mother, at least in her eyes. But Leonora also takes on this persona in her own unrealized motherly instinct, as her own daughter, Judith Grabowski, passed away five years ago at the age of ten in an accidental drowning. Reality could threaten this new arrangement, that reality in the form of Cenci's paternal spinster aunts, Hannah (Peggy Ashcroft) and Hilda (Pamela Brown), who, if they can't inherit the Engelhard estate, plan to steal it one item at a time, and in the form of Margaret's second husband, Albert (Robert Mitchum), who returns from abroad where he was living and who not only has that opportunistic sense like the rest of them, but also a predatory nature specifically when it comes to Cenci. What happens is also affected by Leonora coming to a better understanding of Cenci's psychological and emotional issues, and she doing whatever required to protect her "daughter" at whatever cost in not wanting to lose another child all over again.