The Third Secret
Directed by Charles Crichton
Written by Robert L. Joseph
1964/UK
Hubris Productions
First viewing/YouTube
[box] Alex Stedman: It (complicated broadcasting equipment) saves people from having to think about what they’re really doing. They have to concentrate on how to do it.
Catherine Whitset: That’s therapy. It doesn’t really help.[/box]
This slightly ponderous and Freudian story has a pretty good mystery at its heart.
As the movie begins, psychoanalyst Leo Whitset is found dying of a bullet wound to the head. He tells his housekeeper no one but himself is to blame. After what they say has been an exhaustive investigation, police determine the death to have been a suicide. This is devastating news to the doctor’s patients and colleagues because it goes against everything he stood for.
The doctor’s 14-year-old daughter Catherine (Pamela Franklin) approaches American journalist Alex Steadman (Stephen Boyd), a patient of her father, and wants him to investigate her theory that the death was a murder. After initial reluctance, Steadman is on the case. He and Catherine become fast friends in the process. With Jack Hawkins, Richard Attenborough and Diane Cliento as former patients and a very young Judy Dench in a small role as a shop assistant.
This was OK, if a bit too contrived for my taste. I was pleasantly surprised that Boyd’s prerformance was so good – he didn’t wow me in Ben Hur or Jumbo. Disclaimer: The sound went progressively more out of synch on YouTube video I watched, making it hard for me to understand – and there is a lot of talking.
