Details

Release year: 1968

Storyline

A penniless woman meets a strange girl who insists she is her long-lost mother, and becomes enmeshed in a web of deception, and perhaps madness.

Top credits

Directors

Joseph Losey

Writers

Cast

Elizabeth Taylor — Leonora
Robert Mitchum — Albert
Mia Farrow — Cenci
Peggy Ashcroft — Hannah

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Awards

0 wins & 2 nominations

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Did you know

• When this movie aired on NBC several years later, it was not only heavily edited to sanitize some of the seamier sexual suggestions, but also included newly shot footage (none involving any of the actors or actresses who appeared in the actual movie: Michael Tolan, Paul Rogers), including a prologue and epilogue in which a psychiatrist character discussed the characters' failings and attempted to explain away the truncated movie's many plot holes. Amongst other major changes was the profession of Leonora Grabowski (Dame Elizabeth Taylor), who somehow morphed from a prostitute in the theatrical release to a wig model in the television version. Of the TV version, director Losey said: "not one person connected artistically with the film was consulted or involved in those changes. They're absurd...completely destroyed the rhythm, intention and content of the film...absolutely reversing the meaning of the film."

• Robert Douglas and Michael Strong were not in the theatrical version of this movie, appearing only in scenes added to it for American television showings. These scenes were shot in Hollywood by a different director and crew several months after this movie's theatrical release. Director Joseph Losey neither authorized nor approved of these changes, which he described as "absolutely illegal". This severely amended version was, fortunately, withdrawn from circulation eventually.

• Despite several rave reviews, this was a box-office failure, Elizabeth Taylor's second big flop in a row after Boom! (1968), which was also directed by Joseph Losey. In later years, a bemused Losey would tell interviewers that, simply for making two Elizabeth Taylor films in quick succession, he had found himself very "hot" as a director, and was thus able to command considerably larger fees than before, the lack of box-office success being ignored.

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