Secret Beyond the Door [Remastered Special Edition] [DVD]

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Another take on the BLUEBEARD/REBECCA type storyline from German auteur Fritz Lang, although I have to say that this is one of his worst movies. The story involves an idealistic young bride who marries a handsome man and moves into his ancestral home only to discover that he's hiding some very dark secrets. Who is the mysterious scarred woman in his home, and what secret is lurking behind door number seven? Draped in Gothic overtones and astonishingly beautiful into the bargain, it's unmistakably a Lang film. His ire towards the cast and studio, where he was usurped in the cutting room and with choice of cinematographer, led Lang to be very dismissive towards the piece. However, it contains all that's good about the great director. Scenes such as the opening involving a paper boat on ripples of water, or a sequence that sees Mark dream he is in a courtroom full of faceless jurors, these are indelible images. Then there's the lighting techniques used around the moody Lamphere mansion that are simply stunning, with Cortez (The Night of the Hunter) photographing with atmospheric clarity. Pet the Dog: A literal example. One of the reasons Celia can't give up entirely on Mark is that she sees him bring home a hurt dog and bandage his leg. Secret Beyond the Door is directed by Fritz Lang and adapted to screenplay by Silvia Richards from a story by Rufus King. It stars Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere, Barbara O'Neil and Natalie Schafer. Music is by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography by Stanley Cortez. Her worries are temporarily alleviated when Mark invites her to join him at the Lamphere family home, but his inexplicable mood swings continue and make her unsure of whether she has married wisely. To add to her concerns, Celia finds out that Mark already has a son from a previous marriage, that the last wife died under Mark's care, and that people suspect Mark of marrying Celia to bail him out of his precarious financial position.

Being the 40's the Freudian overtones are overpowering, as the husband, Michael Redgrave in his first Hollywood role, seems to be over-reacting to years of unhealthy female influence and dominance in his life as his mood swings like, well, I guess you'd say, a door. Mark is disturbed at the unequal height of the two candles in the bedroom. Celia receives the copy of the key she had made to the seventh room, enters it and recognizes it as an exact duplicate of her and Mark’s bedroom. She concludes that it does indeed commemorate the death of Eleanor until she notices that the dresser candles are uneven in the same way they are in the real bedroom now. The room is to display not Mark’s past murder of Eleanor but his future murder of her. She runs away. I also don't know what her problem would be with her performance which is convincing and has the range of someone who does fall in love - look at her in that scene at the Mexican cafe when she falls for Michael Redgrave, it's a directed-acted-written moment that doesn't miss a beat for emotional impact - and then as soon as her husband shows off his, ahem, 'rooms' (that display murders that have happened, not in that house just, you know, *elsewhere* right?) And Redgrave, though given a character we mostly have figured out from the start, is solid as an uptight widower (or is he??)Crowther, Bosley. The New York Times, film review, "'Secret Beyond the Door,' With Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave, Has Premiere", January 16, 1948. Accessed: July 12, 2013.

This film sees Mark (Michael Redgrave) with a psychological problem. There are a few things wrong in his head, eg, he collects rooms where murders have been committed. He lays these rooms out exactly as they were, with original artifacts, at the time the murders were committed and devotes a wing of his house to them. When Celia (Joan Bennett) marries him, she only discovers his passion when a rain storm ruins the outside house-warming party they are giving, and he brings the guests indoors for a tour of the house. Creepy Housekeeper: Miss Robey, Mark's secretary, has an unvaryingly stony expression and wears a scarf at all times to hide her disfiguring facial scars. She suggested that everything after Joan Bennett screams when she sees a man in the mist is Redgrave's dream, hallucination, or justification. If you recall, the next scene after the scream is where Redgrave puts himself on trial. JF proposed that the rest of the film is how Redgrave would like things to have been, instead of the reality of his having killed Joan after she screamed. Yet, this screenplay is quite well written. When Redgrave first speaks to Bennett he compares her to the weather in the Dakotas, the sunny stillness with the turbulence of a storm still to come, and the first breath of wind bending the wheat, etc. It sounds more perfumed than it is when Redgrave delivers these observations. Disregarding the Harlequin romance inherent in the situation, some effort (and talent) when into this dialog. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this one, because I'm a fan of Fritz Lang and Joan Bennett.Secret Beyond the Door is a 1948 Film Noir thriller directed by Fritz Lang, starring Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave. Alma sews her dress overnight but stops when she runs out of needles. She searches for one in the attic but finds a brooch with a tag encrypting "February 14th, 1945" from Enid Dolan. She shows this to her daughter but doesn't know who bought it. Scooter later arrives at Rita's house and the two get sex with each other. However, Carlo wakes up and hears noises. Suspecting it to be Rita and her lover, he tries to catch them in the act but falls down to the stairs. At the day of the party, Alma appears with her new dress and Rita lies about Carlo's cause why he is in the hospital. Vern stalks Scooter outside of his place and takes a photograph of a woman going inside Scooter's room. It is revealed that the woman is Dee and that they are both lovers. At the party, Alma talks to a woman who recognizes Alma's cameo brooch, revealing that it belonged to her deceased Aunt Enid who died at Valentines Day. Rita receives a phone call from a doctor and tells her that Carlo is alive but will need her assistance since he can no longer move. The supernatural suggestion goes even further when Celia flees the mansion into a fogbound grove of trees, only to see a menacing male figure approaching through the mist, like Death himself. It isn't too much of a leap to theorize that this scene (just three or four shots) inspired one of the nightmares in the cult horror classic Dementia/Daugher of Horror.

The plot may creak at times like an old floorboard, Redgrave and Bennett are somewhat stiff and cold in their parts and the continuity isn't all it could be, but if like me you like film noir settings then this is for you too. Thus we get Bennett's interior monologues, lots of shots of her in front of mirrors, lots of scenes with darkened doors and symbolic keys, and even a shroud-like mist followed by a thunderstorm on the climactic night. There are some great shots of starkly-lit corridors and a wonderfully imaginative dream sequence (yes, it has those too) of Redgrave's where he's prosecuting himself in front of a judge and jury whose faces are in shadow. Dmitri Tiompkin's atmospheric score adds a lot to the overall mystery and dread, particularly at the end. Like the film version of "Rebecca", this starts with the heroine (Joan Bennett) narrating the beginning of the tale, going into the saga of how she went through losing her older brother and gained a fortune, and ended up falling in love with a brooding man (Michael Redgrave) whom she met on vacation. He forgets to tell her that he is a widower and a father, and that his house is planted with infamous rooms recreated from actual crime scenes. Anne Revere gives a nuanced portrayal of his loving but somewhat overbearing sister (who basically takes care of the young son), while Barbara O'Neil goes down Mrs. Danvers territory as the scarred secretary that was on the verge of being fired before rescuing the son from a fire. Clothing-Concealed Injury: Miss Robey wears a scarf at all times to hide the disfiguring facial scars she received recusing Mark from a fire as a child. Except she had plastic surgery to remove the scars during her last vacation. She keeps wearing the scarf because she fears the family's sympathy is the only reason she is keeping her job. Admittedly, the denouement is still a bit hard to take - just how nuts is Redgrave, does he really mean to kill B and if so why? Miss B is given the lion's share of the camera with flattering costumes and even an off-screen commentary (the sudden switch at the climax to an off-camera commentary by Redgrave is another element that doesn't work) but she is no Joan Fontaine.One fateful day, she reads in the newspaper that one of its members, Vonda Van Esen, has died. The club famously only allows a limited number of members, so she realizes that this is her chance. She excitedly shares the news with her husband, Dr. Bertram Fillcot, who gently reminds her that the Elysian Park Garden Club consists entirely of wealthy women who have their gardens tended to by professionals. Dejected, Alma agrees that her chances of getting in are slim.