The Third Secret
by Charles Crichton
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Diane Cilento, Jack Hawkins, Pamela Franklin, Richard Attenborough, Stephen BoydDirector: Charles Crichton
Brand: Fox
Cinematographer: Douglas Slocombe
Editor: Frederick Wilson
Producer: Hugh Perceval
Producer: Robert L. Joseph
Writer: Robert L. Joseph
Producer: Shirley Bernstein
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-05-22
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of The Third Secret
Movie Review: A haunting & haunted film
Summary: 5 Stars
Here's a powerful film that was completely unknown to me, one that deserves to be much better known. It's suspenseful & unsettling, but it's also far more than that.
When a noted psychiatrist dies suddenly, the official decree is suicide. But his fourteen year old daughter Cathy (a stunning young Pamela Franklin) doesn't believe her father would have killed himself, and she pleads with TV commentator Alex Stedman (an equally good Stephen Boyd) to investigate.
Alex has his own reasons for wanting to discover the truth. A patient of the dead psychiatrist himself, he's been shattered by the suicide. The doctor helped pull Alex out of despair when his wife & daughter died, and Alex fears that suicide means that everything that helped him was a lie. He desperately needs to learn the truth for the sake of his own sanity. So he begins investigating the doctor's other recent patients, sure that one of them must be a murderer.
What makes this film especially striking is the overall look & tone of it. Filmed in black & white, there's a world-weariness to it, a sense of balancing precariously over a dark, chaotic abyss that waits to claim everyone. Stephen Boyd is superb, his handsome but hard face etched with grief & doubt. He erupts in rage & fear at times, and raises the suspicion that he may be the murderer himself, having blotted out that self-knowledge. Could it be possible? Or is he simply struggling to survive in a world bereft of personal meaning?
We follow his investigation, which leads first to a tortured gallery owner & aspiring painter played by an unrecognizable Richard Attenborough; then to an intimate encounter with another patient, portrayed with brittle beauty & growing despair by Diane Cilento; and finally to a craggy, distinguished judge with a secret, played by Jack Hawkins.
But the most fascinating relationship is between Alex & fourteen year old Cathy. She's unnaturally precocious, a woman-child wise beyond her years, who obviously sees an understanding father figure in Alex. He in turn sees his own dead daughter as she might have been, and it's only in her presence that his grim face softens with tenderness & hope. Some modern viewers might tend to see this relationship as Cathy's suspicious uncle does, that of a predator moving in on a vulnerable girl. But it's something quite different, innocent yet somehow erotic all the same -- certainly it's the most intense relationship in the film.
The script is highly literate, the sort of writing that's seldom seen in films today. And the suspense builds as the film moves forward, an almost existential suspense -- the mystery isn't just about the identity of the murderer, but whether life itself has any meaning. It leads to a stunning climax that frankly jolted me. I wondered if it might not be better to end the film at that point, which would have been terribly bleak but effective. Yet the final scenes, while not viscerally shocking, are all the more sad & heartbreakingly tender, reminding the viewer that some wounds never fully heal.
Most highly recommended!
Summary of The Third Secret
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