Before I take a look at Charles Crichton’s 1964 film The Third Secret, I want to talk about one of its stars. Back in July when I posted The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I expressed some curiosity about the career trajectory of one of its principles, Pamela Franklin, whose memorable performance seemed to promise a successful career for another decade or two, given her young age:
Certainly something more than the vague recollections of my youth of her occasional guest appearances on television and made-for-TV films like Satan’s School For Girls. We are talking about the go-to child actress from the 1960s who held her own against Hollywood heavyweights like William Holden (A Tiger Walks), Bette Davis (The Nanny) and Marlon Brando (The Night the Following Day), and top British stars like Deborah Kerr (The Innocents), Dirk Bogarde (Our Mother’s House) and of course Maggie Smith. After her superb performance in Prime, she certainly appeared to be an actress with a future as an adult.
But something went seriously awry. She appeared in a couple more British films, Sinful Davey with John Hurt, and And Soon the Darkness (an interesting thriller that Kino-Lorber released on Blu-ray), but these films and her subsequent work in television both in Britain (such as in the anthology series Thriller), but mostly in the U.S., such as here being wheeled about by Joe Mannix…
…turned out not to be mere pit stops on the way to bigger and better. She was the star in a Green Acres episode that was meant to be the pilot for a spinoff series called Pam; apparently the producer thought he saw another Sally Field, and even brought in Don Porter to reprise his exasperated father character from Gidget. Unfortunately it wasn’t picked up by the networks, probably because, well, it wasn't very funny (kind of like Gidget, which only lasted one season). Franklin’s last acting credit before settling into a life of domestic bliss was in the television series Vega$ in 1981.
Her non-television films in the 1970s were, to put it bluntly, leftovers for actors looking for a credit. The horror film Necromancy is perhaps more notable for the fact of Orson Welles looking bored and mailing it in, and that Franklin met her future husband Harvey Jason on the set. Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies isn’t quite the disaster it is made out to be, although Steven Spielberg—who was given a story credit and was originally slated to direct—wasn’t told by the other filmmakers that they had put phony names in place of their own on the credits in protest of the studio cutting the film up. The Legend of Hell House was typical horror fare for the time, while Franklin’s last non-television film, Food of the Gods in 1976, hasn’t quite made it to bad movie cult status yet, despite the presence of Ida Lupino joining the "horror hag" ranks. The only photo I found of Franklin since her "retirement" was this image from a recent film premiere:
So what happened? In her audio commentary on Prime, Franklin suggests that there was a secret rule that prevented the mixing of television and films—either you did one or the other. She also spoke of not feeling “respected” enough, at least not on American sets; in Britain she was addressed as “Miss Franklin,” while in America it was “hey you.” She also implied that she was losing her “looks,” which in her case merely meant that she was getting older. To be “frank” she was also quite short, just 5-0. Of course strategic camera angles do help if you have enough star power; Alan Ladd was almost 10 inches shorter than Ben Johnson when he beat him up in Shane, and dang me if Scarlett Johansson always plays action characters who look like they should be taller than 5-3.
Perhaps Franklin thought she had better opportunities in the U.S.; in the audio commentary in The Third Secret Blu-ray, it is suggested that by 1970, the British film industry was in decline, probably because American financing was drying up. While five films with British themes—all of them period films—won the Oscar for Best Picture during the Sixties (and that isn’t including The Sound of Music), during the Seventies all of the best picture winners were American themed. During the 1970s, the British film industry found that money was to be made in low-budget sex comedies; although Franklin had done “adult” scenes when she was only 18 in Night and Prime (probably to escape being typecast as a “child” actress), in America there were more opportunities to expand one’s horizons. Unfortunately, there was also more competition for work as well.
But as has been pointed out, Franklin was making a name for herself as a “child” actress in dramatic roles, not in goofball comedies like her peers. Although The Third Secret isn’t a great film, its primary focus on the interactions between Franklin’s character Cathy Whitset, and that of Alex Stedman, played by Stephen Boyd (best known as Marcellus in Ben Hur), is well written and acted, and does make an effort to be a “message” film inside a murder mystery.
The movie opens with the housekeeper of the home that Cathy lives in finds her father, Dr. Leo Whitset, mortally wounded after being shot. He beseeches her to tell people that there is “no one to blame but me”:
It makes headline news…
…and at least one person seems to be “relieved” by the news, Sir Frederick Belline (Jack Hawkins):
Whitset’s colleague, Dr. Gillen (Paul Rogers), seems mystified by his taking his own life:
Anne Tanner (Diane Cilento, who had dark hair as Molly in Tom Jones) can’t seem to keep her mind on the job…
…and to art dealer and amateur painter Alfred Price-Gorham (Richard Attenborough)…
…Whitset has already excited some disturbance in his mind:
A fourth person, Alex Stedman, is also is disturbed by the death of the doctor. He is the host of a television commentary program called “The American Page”; he is told by his producer to “keep it gloomy”—because his viewers eat it up, and after all, it’s all “product.” After everyone leaves, Stedman sits alone, pondering about man’s obligation to man:
But he has a visitor, a young girl who has talked a security guard into letting her on the set:
She marvels about how “complicated” the set is, and Stedman observes that it has to be, so people have to think about what they are doing and not why. The girl says that is “therapy,” and therapy doesn’t work:
She mentions that her father was impressed by his work, and that she had seen him many times at her house in the past. Who is she? She says she is Catherine, Dr. Whitset’s daughter. Stedman testily claims he doesn’t know her father, and she should go home, but Cathy says she has no home; she has been “inherited” by her aunt and uncle.
She insists that her father did not kill himself, and Stedman recites all the evidence that he did. But Cathy is adamant that one of his patients killed him; he wasn’t “depressed," he just felt more than others. Despite knowing that Stedman himself was one of his patients, like her father he wants people to live. Won’t he help her like her father helped him?:
Stedman leaves without answering her, and wanders about the riverside near Dr. Whitset’s home where his basement office was located. Looking at the nameplate by his office, Stedman intones “liar”:
Not noticing Cathy watching him, he observes something written in chalk on a wall, and writes the “answer” below it; it was part of a "game" that Cathy had played with her father:
Cathy knows where all of her father’s patients live, including Stedman, and she finds him in an enraged state wrecking his apartment:
Cathy asks him not to hate her father; he didn't "lie" to him like he thinks.
Stedman’s wife and daughter are dead, and the recurring motif of water suggests that they had died of drowning. He says that people don’t forget how to do things even if they haven’t done them in a long time (like typing or riding a bicycle). But he had forgotten how to laugh, to whistle or talk to children without frightening them. Dr. Whitset told him he could remember to do those things again, but then he heard a “shot,” and the lesson was over, presumably meaning that Dr. Whitset’s apparent suicide invalidate what he had told him:
Cathy continues to insist that her father did not die the way they said he did, and again asks him to help her find out the truth:
Stedman does agree to at least do some digging, because he wants to believe too. First he encounters a senior officer with Scotland Yard, who insists that all the evidence points to suicide. Stedman wants the names of Dr. Whitset’s patients, but the officer claims he doesn’t have access to them, and that is privileged information anyways:
He then sees Dr. Gillen, who tells him that Dr. Whitset only treated “healthy” neurotics, not psychotics. But he admitted that it possible in the course of treatment to discover that a patient was a “borderline” schizophrenic—or even worse, a “paranoid schizophrenic” who could fool anyone into believing that they were “normal,” and may even feel and act completely innocent, until stresses became too much, and they either carefully plot or suddenly explode into violence. This is one of most dangerous kind of persons we know, Dr. Gillen says gravely. Stedman suggests that “we must find this person.” However, Dr. Gillen cannot give him a list of names of Dr. Whitset’s patients:
Meanwhile after school, Cathy believes that her schoolmates are making insinuations about her father and about herself…
…and sees a man who she thinks is following her…
...and starts running fright...
…and encounters Stedman, who was waiting for her after being told this is the way she walked home when she still lived in her father’s house. She accuses him of following her, but he is wearing a different colored suit than the man who had frightened her:
They encounter a statue of Hans Christian Andersen, fated here to stare forever for the crime of telling tall tales, and who was considered a lunatic by the community. While there, they talk about the “three secrets”: the first is what we don’t tell others, and the second is what we don’t tell ourselves. But what is the third secret? That is the “secret”:
Stedman and Cathy are not just good friends now, but surrogate father and daughter. When Stedman tells her he has reached a dead end in his investigation of Dr. Whitset’s death, Cathy tells Stedman she knows by the number of bills sent out to certain individuals who are and what are the addresses of those patients, and will provide them to him:
First he visits the art dealer Price-Gorham, whose assistant seen here is Judi Dench in one of her first screen appearances:
Stedman discovers that the art dealer, here groveling meekly before a client, is a rather pathetic man who doesn’t have the “killer” instinct:
Next he encounters Anne Tanner, who cannot pass a day without feeling “desperate.” She seems to be afraid of interacting with other human beings, or doing anything entailing the element of risk. From a hill they watch some cars bumper-to-bumper on their way home; someone told her this would happen to her, she says. Who told her what? She will not say, but we suspect it had something to do with Dr. Whitset and her treatment:
Stedman then visits Cathy at the home of her aunt Millie (the sister of the deceased), who tells him that she speaks of him frequently. She mentions with some surprise that Cathy has not been acting “ill” over her father’s death, but rather just“fine”:
Stedman then meets the uncle, Mr. Hoving. He says that Dr. Whitset needed a doctor himself if he couldn’t “cope.” He mentions that there was no money from Dr. Whitset's estate; the house was mortgaged, and since he was judged to have committed suicide, the life insurance policies were canceled:
Cathy appears and angrily denies her father died from suicide. She wants to know what progress Stedman has had searching for his killer, but he has no news. Why is he “dressed up”? He has a date, not mentioning that it is with Anne, one of the “suspects”:
Before Stedman departs, they talk about the possibility of never seeing each other again; after all, her father will never kiss her goodnight again. Cathy tells him “Look, I’m crying,” but Stedman sees no tears; but her pain is, like for him, “all inside.” After he leaves, the real tear falls:
Stedman meets Anne at her apartment, and she is dressed for the occasion. He tries to put his arms around her, but she stops him: she wants to initiate the contact for once, since she only knows how “react” to what people say or do:
After the dinner she has prepared, they sleep together, but Stedman has a nightmare involving the water motif and repeatedly mentions Dr. Whitset’s name:
When he awakens, Anne is already up, and confronts him about what he said in his sleep. She feels that he has tricked her. She thinks about Dr. Whitset all the time too, but not last night, when they made love. He can’t help her—and vise-versa—because the memory of Dr. Whitset and their problems. He will always be between them like a ghost:
Stedman then visits the third person on the list (not including himself), the distinguished judge Sir Frederick Belline, who thinks that the journalist wants to do a show on him. Stedman instead wants to know his thoughts about Dr. Whitset; Belline is clearly disturbed by the insinuation that there might be a case file on him. Whatever is in it is something that would ruin his career and reputation. It happened so long ago, so why be so cruel as to bring it up now?
Stedman admits he’s seen no files, which of course angers Belline because he sees himself tricked into revealing that there is some horrible truth in his past. Why is he doing this? Because he needs to know the truth, because Dr. Whitset had told him that he could live again, but if he couldn’t live with himself, then everything he said was a lie.
Stedman then finds Cathy in her father's house, telling her they shouldn’t be there since it’s been sealed up. There is a photograph of an old house in the country that her father never took her too, but where he went to write and think. Since Cathy knows “everything,” she must know the address of the house, which she tells him:
Cathy then shows Stedman her old bedroom, and wants him to see how “bouncy” the bed is; just then her uncle walks in and accuses Stedman of having some pedophilia intent:
Stedman angrily tells him he has a “dirty” mind and tries to choke him, but Cathy stops him:
She suggests that Stedman may be the killer of her father, but frightened by what he has done, Stedman attempts to assure her that it was not him:
Back at work, Stedman sees on the television screen that Anne has killed herself, and left a note suggesting that she was responsible for Dr. Whitset’s death:
Stedman meets Cathy; he is not certain that Anne was responsible for her father's death, but Cathy seems to be and is happy now that she can keep the house and the insurance money. She mentions that five patients were too many for her father, with all the work he did at the institute. Stedman is surprised to hear her say five when he thought there were only four; Cathy—who is so good with facts—realizes that she said something that has caused suspicion, and claims that she was mistaken:
That night Stedman finds the house in the picture (which was deeded to Millie, but she allowed her brother the use of) which seems to be mostly devoid of evidence of one living there. He finds a locked basement door and forces it open. Down below he finds a file cabinet, where he discovers Dr. Whitset’s patient files, which includes one he was shocked to find as the fifth patient:
He suspects that Cathy is at her father’s house; on his way there, he finds that she has written “What Is The Third Secret?” in chalk on the wall:
Stedman finds Cathy in the house, where she insists she is not alone, suggesting she is having some kind of psychotic episode, which Stedman now knows she suffers from:
It is then the “third secret” is revealed: the truth:
Stedman wants to take Cathy back to her aunt’s house, but in her psychotic trance she no longer sees Stedman, but a stranger who is there to take her away to a mental institution, just as she “remembers” on the day of her father’s death. Stedman, who has “re-learned” how to talk to children without frightening them, is now confronted with a child who is now in a mental state beyond whatever kindness he can offer. Cathy rushes down to her father’s old office room, where like she did of her own father, mistakes Stedman for a person who is going to take her to an asylum; revealing a pair of scissors in her hand, she stabs him several times in the chest. It is apparent now that she killed her father, but did so in that “out-of-body” paranoid schizophrenic state, thinking he was someone else, which explains her lack of guilt in killing her father:
As Stedman crumbles to the floor, Cathy suddenly remembers him, and calls out to him for help:
Later as he is recovering in a hospital, Stedman explains to Millie the circumstances around Dr. Whitset’s death. He knew his daughter was seriously ill, but he could not bear the thought of sending her to an asylum filled with screams and silences; if there was a chance she could live a “normal” life, he was willing to take that chance—and in her condition, she was the only one he would have allowed this for. It must have broke his heart when he realized too late that this was a mistake:
Before she leaves, Millie reminds him that it was Cathy who called for help when she discovered him wounded, apparently not comprehending that she herself had done it. Then we see Stedman, fully recovered, visiting the institute where Cathy is being held; she has not spoken to anyone since she has been there, and appears to be completely insensible to anything or anyone around her. Why is he visiting her? Because she is still his friend. Stedman tells Cathy that he is free to visit her any time; although she doesn’t appear to hear him, he tells her its “all inside”:
But as he leaves, Cathy suddenly “awakens” from her trance-like state; she remembers him. She asks Stedman if it was a “good thing” that he found out that her father did not die “badly,” that he in fact had not committed suicide:
Stedman agrees that it is a “good thing,” and starts to leave again, but after she has written her initials on the foggy window she has been staring through—a sign of some recognition of reality—the rain falling against the window causes her to say “Look Alex, I’m crying.”
There are problems with this film; the “suspects” in Dr. Whitset’s death are mostly just cardboard cutouts, and we never really find out what it is that ails them enough to make them credible candidates for murder. In fact from what we have seen from Stedman during his destruction of his apartment and later trying to suffocate the uncle makes it appear that he should be the prime suspect, which at least adds an element of suspense, even if his character is too sympathetic for the viewer to take that suspicion too seriously. There was some criticism of the factual nature of Dr. Gillen’s various ideas of psychology, but being this is a movie, what matters is that it does add to the suspicion of something horrible is about to be discovered.
But this film really belongs to
Franklin, who like in Prime holds her
own in her interactions with the adults; in fact in both Prime and Secret she
seems more the “adult” than the adult stars in those films. While we do start
to suspect that there is something wrong with Cathy when in a fit of paranoia she runs from a complete stranger she believes is following her, Franklin is too accomplished an actress
even at that young age to give away the game until the very end—when even as we suspect
what is coming, we still don’t want to believe it. One thing that we can believe
is that once stuck in the rut of television, Franklin would never see roles
like these again where she could stretch out her considerable talent.
No comments:
Post a Comment