Secret Beyond the Door... (1947)

Copyright 8 March 1948 by Diana Productions, Inc. Released through Universal-International Pictures Co., Inc. Presented by Walter Wanger. New York opening at the Winter Garden: 15 January 1948. U.S. release: February 1948. U.K. release: December 1948. Australian release: 15 April 1948. Sydney opening at the Victory. 8,869 feet. 98 minutes.It's a funny thing but this film really grows on you after you've seen it a few times. In fact, on a third outing I found it quite disturbing. Admittedly the viewings were separated by some years but the initial response of disappointment and belief that it was not a typical Lang film have now changed with the latest sighting to a conviction that here indeed is the typical Fritz. You see I have now discounted some of the initial feelings about it being just a women's soap opera with Babs O'Neil making a fair fist of a sort of poor woman's Mrs Danvers. The film is very, very lavishly produced (it's not till the third viewing that you work out that the "rooms" would have to be models in order to contain the expense) and very atmospherically photographed and has a stinger of a score by Rozsa. Now that we've got the soap opera elements out of the way we can see details that we missed like the gypsy knife fight and the very idea of collecting rooms and the background of the characters. 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. Still it's a film that certainly repays re-viewing, its sets, its score, its atmosphere and any film photographed by Cortez is a MUST-SEE anyway.

Pseudo-Hitch intriguing drama about a woman who gradually realizes she is married to a killer and may be next on his list .This classic suspense film contains emotion , intrigue , chills, and evocative scenarios . When a lovely as well as wealthy heiress named Celia (Joan Bennett) spends a fun holiday she meets a good-looking guy called Mark Lamphere and ends up falling in love with him . Later on , she marries the widower (Michael Redgrave's first American film) and finds out weird happenings about him . She and her new husband, settle in an ancient mansion on the East coast, she discovers he may want to kill her . Understandably , she wonders what plans he might have for her . The mansion has got a lot of rooms that are replicas of known murder sites . In the tour of the three rooms, Mark Lamphere recounts the tales of three murders, all of which are fictional. However in the first room, he mentions the St Bartholomew's Day massacre and the Guise family in France. The massacre is a real historical event, where French Roman Catholics attacked French Huguenots (Protestants) on 24th of August 1572 resulting in many deaths.Dazzling Hitch/style suspense movie about a beautiful woman marries a rare man with a shock revelation around every corner their mansion . It packs hallucination , treason , Bennett plays a rich wife trying to help her hubby , well played by Michael Redgrave , who is suffering from amnesia and who might be a murderer too . The picture takes elements from classic Hitchcock films , carrying out a crossover among ¨Suspicion ¨, ¨Spellbound¨ and ¨Rebeca¨ . In fact ,Fritz Lang's attempt to do his version of Rebeca (1940) was a project fraught with disaster. It ran over budget and over schedule, while Lang was at constant loggerheads with his leading lady, Joan Bennett . As it stars the great Joan Bennett , being compellingly directed by Lang ; but it is not as outstanding as their former movies together : ¨Man hunt¨, ¨The woman in the window¨ and ¨Scarlet street¨. Support cast is pretty good such as Anne Revere as Caroline Lamphere , Barbara O'Neil as Miss Robey and Paul Cavanagh as Rick Barrett . Atmospheric as well as mistly cinematography in black and white by Stanley Cortez . Thrilling and frightening musical score by the classic Miklos Rozsa . The motion picture was professionally directed by Fritz Lang . Lang directed masterfully all kind of genres as Noir cinema as ¨Big heat , Scarlet Street and Beyond a reasonable doubt¨ , Epic as ¨Nibelungs¨, suspense as ¨Secret beyond the door, Clash by night¨ , Western as ¨Rancho Notorious and Return of Frank James ¨ and of course Adventure as ¨Moonfleet¨ .

Boy, what a total let-down it was (after giving this potentially promising 1947 picture 99 minutes of my time) to find out that the secret beyond the door was nothing but an absurd "WTF?" moment (which, because it was expected to be taken as dead-serious, was, in turn, reduced to being completely laughable).As far as I'm concerned, Secret Beyond The Door was truly 1940's psycho-drama at its most pathetic, predictable and preposterous.Not only did this picture make Fritz Lang look to me like an incompetent boob, when he was apparently supposed to be a very respected, Hollywood director (this isn't the first film of his that I've felt this way about his directorial skills) - But when it came to Miklos Roza's music score, which was not only frequently far too loud and out of sync with the action taking place on the screen, but, like Lang's direction, there was a heavy-handedness to it that rendered it as being amateurish entertainment.Another thing that lost this picture some major points was its leading actress, Constance Bennett, who was nothing but a detestable clotheshorse. This woman must've changed her outfits at least 20 times throughout the course of the story. And no matter what the situation in the story was, you could be sure that Bennett was immaculately coiffed and over-dressed in the most ridiculous 1940's fashions imaginable.About the only thing worth watching in the entirety of this picture was its fairly intriguing opening sequence which showed an otherworldly image of a misty pond. As the camera slowly followed the gentle ripples circling across its surface, strange forms could be faintly glimpsed at down below.Other than that rather hypnotic opening sequence, Secret Beyond The Door was, pretty much, nothing but a clunky, cluttered mess of sheer nonsense.

All the ingredients are there for an engaging story of a brooding widower with a distant young son who marries a lost young woman and brings her home to his house of mystery. In the hands of the usually brilliant Fritz Lang, however, comes a story so unbelievable and pretentious that the results are so melodramatically ridiculousness that sometimes you really don't believe what is transpiring on screen.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.Natalie Schafer is amusing as Bennett's best friend ("I'm not as poisonous as I look", she tells Redgrave upon their first meeting) who is part of a tour Redgrave takes some party guests on to view the remakes of the rooms Redgrave collects. She is the first person to point out the mysterious locked door which Redgrave refuses to open, making Bennett mighty suspicious. But curiosity killed the cat and threatens to do in the second wife, leading to a melodramatic conclusion that seems totally ripped off from "Rebecca".Even Joan Bennett admitted this film was a fiasco, her over-acting here sometimes out of tune with her usually excellent performances. Redgrave as the brooding hero actually tones down his performance, giving what mystery there is there some interest. It's just too bad that the results are so ridiculously silly, since the film is beautifully photographed and almost Gothic in nature. While the acting certainly could have been better, the fault for what results lies in the hand of director Lang who seemed to be going for a sense of romance, mystery and film noir which never gels.