Double Door

Everything about this movie is masterful, from the story to the performances to the costumes to the sets. Charles Vidor did an excellent job of adapting a stage production to the screen. It is appropriately claustrophobic but never stale.

Rip Van Brett (Kent Taylor) is getting married. He comes from one of the oldest established and wealthiest families in New York, so when he chooses a nurse (Evelyn Venable) to be a his bride, his spinster sister Victoria (Mary Morris) is unhappy. She has already foiled one sibling Caroline (Anne Revere) from finding wedded bliss, and she intends to break up her brother's happiness too with her underhanded schemes.

This film was shown at Cinevent 2014, and everyone I knew who saw it at another film festival urged me to see it. Apparently word of mouth spread because the screening was packed. The audience ate it up, to the point that several times people began yelling at the screen. If you ever get a chance to see this, DO NOT miss it.

This is an ordinary chamber play all taking place in one house, but it is astoundingly efficient especially staged on film that by appalling close-ups turns it into one of the ghastliest nightmares ever rendered alive, mainly because of perhaps the grisliest female characters in film history played by Mary Morris in all too convincing horror. She is just a kind old lady that wishes everybody well, no one can but believe the best of her, everyone trusts her, but she has an obsession: a heritage of a precious pearl necklace, that she doesn't want to part with, when her younger brother imperils her control of the estate when he marries, so she does anything to prevent that marriage, in a positive warfare campaign of intrigues verging on virtuosity. It's a masterful play, and its screening does it more than justice, as Charles Vidor successfully underscores and enhances all the effects, that constantly keep piling up to ever more overwhelming strokes of innovation. No wonder the play kept Broadway on edge. In character it reminds a little of J. B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls", but this is much more gruesome. In short. It's a killer.

The main character here is Mary Moore as Victoria Van Brent, the oldest sister and dominatrix in a family whose only remains are herself, younger sister Caroline, and baby brother Rip. They live together in an old creepy mansion full of reminders of the past but devoid of the present.

Victoria - age unspecified but clearly middle aged- always dresses in black, emotionally batters younger sister Caroline to the point where she is just a shadow of a human being, and has got baby brother Rip convinced that his late father is always looking down on him, and that his wishes are Victoria's wishes.

Let me straighten out one little matter. The synopsis says that the film is about Victoria threatening people with a secret torture chamber in the house. There isn't one, so if you are expecting Vic to go mad and don the red robe of the inquisitors and put somebody on the rack, then you will be sorely disappointed.

The film opens on Rip's wedding day to a "commoner" - a nurse named Ann. Her union to Rip will issue in new blood and life to the family. Victoria has her own idea as to who Rip should marry, and it isn't Ann, whom she assumes is after the family money.

Now this had me wondering, why did Victoria wait until AFTER the wedding to take any action to get rid of Ann? Wouldn't it have been easier if Rip was just beginning to see Ann to nip things in the bud? I guess Victoria figures she can get rid of Ann just as easily after she marries Rip as she could before. Now for a woman to never marry in 1910, the time this film was set, was a big deal and a departure from social norms. But Victoria doesn't seem to hate men, she just loves control. The family money just affords her that control. Marriage at the turn of the 20th century for a woman would mean ceding control, and she was not about to do that.

Victoria starts out with passive aggressive stuff to put a rift between Ann and Rip, but when that doesn't work, she turns to a more severe and permanent solution.

This film has great atmosphere, even if it is a bit claustrophobic. If it didn't say Paramount I'd swear it was a Universal horror with its secret panels and dark corridors. One funny thing about the film - you get a big dose of the thoughts and feelings of everybody in the cast except Victoria, who is the central character. Maybe this is to dehumanize her so the audience can look upon her as pure villain - I know I did.

One bit of trivia - This film was based on a play that was very loosely based on the wealthy Wendel family of 19th and early 20th century New York. The last generation -only the third in fact - consisted of one brother and seven sisters who never married. The brother ruled over the sisters with an iron fist, would not let them socialize or marry because he thought heirs would decentralize their fortune, and did not allow electricity or even a phone into the house. So they all lived together in gloom, prisoners of their wealth until the last sibling died in 1931 leaving a fortune worth 100 million in that day's money - two or three billion today. Ironically, with no direct heirs 2303 people came out of the wood work from all over the world claiming to be heirs including an entire village in Germany named Wendel and some actual distant cousins in Czechoslovakia. Eventually, just about every claim was disproven. However, brother John forgot one thing - if nobody knows what you HAVE been doing, then nobody knows what you HAVEN'T been doing either, thus there were many people among the fortune hunters claiming to be illegitimate children of the recluse siblings.

I'd recommend this old spooky film if it ever comes your way.

Victoria Van Brett (Mary Morris) is a horrible, bitter old woman. She also happens to be rich and in control of the family fortune....and she uses it to control and torment her family. When her niece and nephew try to marry, she does her best to break up the relationships. Why? Well, because she can...and because she enjoys destroying people. But how far she is willing to go....that might just shock you!

This is an incredible film. The opening credits are among the most jarring I've ever seen. You hear Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" and as you hear this creepy music play, scary faces of the folks who star in the film appear abruptly and fly towards the audience in closeups. You really have to see it to appreciate how jarring it is and I actually yelled out when the faces appeared!

The shame of this film is that Ms. Morris only made one film...this one. Otherwise, her acting was confined to the stage...which is a real shame as she was amazing. One of the creepiest and most evocative performances of the 1930s...that is how good she was.

Overall, this is a seldom seen but fantastic movie...one that you won't soon forget....especially when it comes to that double door!

Victoria van Brett is akin to other matriarches of the thirties;she recalls Mrs Phelps (Laura Hope Crews in "the silver cord" : a woman still in love with her son and who sees her daughter-in -law as an intruder ) and Regina (Bette Davis in Lilian Hellmann 's "little foxes" transferred to the screen by the great Wyler: the graspy greedy businesswoman who does not care for her family).

Mary Morris -in her only screen appearance- is so strong a villain she can effortlessly grab today's audience :although hardly 40 ,she looks at least twenty years older ; her hate for the intruder (her nephew's wife) knows no bounds . A flashback shows us as she used to treat her nephew who has lost any will power (it's his wife who rebels,like Irene Dunne did in "the silver cord") ; and the way she tortures her poor sister Caroline ( a whining Anne Revere, a great character actress )!

With its baroque settings , its Gothic atmosphere , "double door" is almost a horror movie :the scene in which Victoria lures the poor wife into the soundproof room seems out of a fairytale in which the witch (Maleficent in "sleeping beauty" )mesmerizes her victim ; the father's ashes , always here to keep a close watch on the unfortunate Rip .

A black pearl.