The final fifteen minutes are quite interesting. But getting there is something of a chore. "The Third Secret" is the story of a famous psychoanalyst who suffers a gunshot wound. His maid finds him and, as he lay dying, he mumbles something to her. The ensuing headline reads: "Is it suicide?" How could a renowned psychiatrist take his own life? His 14-year-old daughter, Catherine (Pamela Franklin), goes to a famous TV reporter named Alex (Stephen Boyd), claiming it was murder, and insists that the killer must have been one of his patients.
Sleepy elevator music at the film's beginning tips you off that what we have here is not a suspense film. It could be construed as a mystery. But mostly it is a drama. With a British setting and British actors, we can correctly describe this film as a British drama. A lot of the scenes take place indoors, on sets. There's a ton of dialogue. Actors recite pages of dramatic lines. I kept waiting for Katharine Hepburn to emerge, to render a ten-minute soliloquy.
Characters trend bland and boring. The dialogue for Catherine is way too precocious for a 14-year-old girl.
Still, the story's theme is deep. At one point, Alex asks an associate of the dead doctor: "Would it be possible for a (paranoid schizophrenic) to murder (the doctor) and make it look like a suicide?" Heavy stuff. The ending is fairly easy to predict.
B&W cinematography is adequate if unremarkable. The camera is mostly static. There are some shadowy scenes toward the end. But overall, the visuals do not lend themselves to suspense. Casting and acting are acceptable.
Stuffy and lacking humor, "The Third Secret" is an actor's film; all the players get to show off their dramatic skills. But as a viewer, I was mostly bored. I had hoped for more suspense. What I got was a slow-paced, old-fashioned British drama set mostly indoors, with a script that had too much dialogue. The film could easily have been set in the 1940s.
Sleepy elevator music at the film's beginning tips you off that what we have here is not a suspense film. It could be construed as a mystery. But mostly it is a drama. With a British setting and British actors, we can correctly describe this film as a British drama. A lot of the scenes take place indoors, on sets. There's a ton of dialogue. Actors recite pages of dramatic lines. I kept waiting for Katharine Hepburn to emerge, to render a ten-minute soliloquy.
Characters trend bland and boring. The dialogue for Catherine is way too precocious for a 14-year-old girl.
Still, the story's theme is deep. At one point, Alex asks an associate of the dead doctor: "Would it be possible for a (paranoid schizophrenic) to murder (the doctor) and make it look like a suicide?" Heavy stuff. The ending is fairly easy to predict.
B&W cinematography is adequate if unremarkable. The camera is mostly static. There are some shadowy scenes toward the end. But overall, the visuals do not lend themselves to suspense. Casting and acting are acceptable.
Stuffy and lacking humor, "The Third Secret" is an actor's film; all the players get to show off their dramatic skills. But as a viewer, I was mostly bored. I had hoped for more suspense. What I got was a slow-paced, old-fashioned British drama set mostly indoors, with a script that had too much dialogue. The film could easily have been set in the 1940s.