Secret Beyond the Door...

Fritz Lang's "Secret Beyond the Door" is a moderately interesting noir. The story, like "The Uninvited" and "Shining Victory" is reminiscent of Hitchcock's film "Rebecca." I say Hitchcock's film and not DuMaurier's 1938 novel, because surprisingly, the novel only sold 20,000 copies and was not a success. I imagine the film changed that.

The story concerns a beautiful woman, Celia (Joan Bennett) who falls madly in love with a mysterious and moody man, Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave) whom she meets while on a trip. She goes to live with him at the family home, which is run by his sister (Anne Revere). It's there she discovers a few things. One is that Mark was married before, is a widower, and has a son (Mark Dennis). Mark also has a secretary (Barbara O'Neil) who covers one side of her face with a scarf to cover a scar from a fire. Mark, she finds, also has a wing where he houses a collection of rooms in which famous murders have taken place. There is one room, however, which is always kept locked. Celia wants to know what's beyond that door, and what makes her husband so moody.

"Beyond the Door" takes inspiration from two other Hitchcock films, Spellbound and Notorious, and taps into the postwar interest in psychology. There is a voice-over narration from the troubled Celia, who recounts her dreams. The film is very atmospheric, the music grand and suspenseful and, though one may be able to guess how it ends, the story is very intriguing. The ending, due to some narrative gaps, is somewhat disappointing.

This isn't Lang's best film but one can certainly see the master's touch in the gloom, the fixation on the door, and the cinematography. Joan Bennett (whom I saw in person and was unbelievably tiny) shines as she usually did under Lang's direction. She could play both sophisticated and glamorous as well as trashy and sweet-smart. Here, in a funny way, she combines both - the character is a bit of a classy femme fatale. Redgrave is properly passionate one minute and distant and a little weird the next. I would have loved to have seen someone like Dirk Bogarde tackle this role a few years later.

Derivative but very good.

I enjoyed it much more the second time around. At first it was far too unbelievable. It hardly made any sense then and I never felt I cared what happened. I bought the video because of Joan Bennett and Fritz Lang making another film noir. Now when i saw it, I loved it and just sat back enjoyed all the hokus-pokus fluff that is delivered quite seriously. It´s supposed to be like "Rebecca" and that´s why I didn´t like it the first time. Too many plot holes! There´s even an exotic ms. Danvers type around with a veil...Too much!

Why would Joan marry and stay with someone so utterly stiff and charmless as Michael Redgrave?? The male lead should have been given to someone more mysterious and attractive. They were hoping for a new Laurence Olivier...

Joan is a treat as always. I love how she comes across as a spoiled debutante who can hardly care to utter her lines with any conviction. She´s a good actress -just a bit too laid back at times. I love her, she is so stunningly beautiful and cool in her Hollywood wardrobes.

I love the whole atmosphere of the movie. It´s slow at first and then from the honeymoon in Mexico and forward so mysterious! I love her bedroom with the tapestry! The thing with the room-collecting was quite farfetched but fun. Who would REALLY aquire complete scenes of murders at home???? I´m going to see it again soon and learn some lines. They don´t make them like they used to!

The Secret Beyond the Door is Fritz Lang's melodramatic suspense tale that seems to have taken more than it's fair share of influence from Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca. Before the story even starts, we're waiting to find out one thing - what's the secret? This somewhat puts the movie on the back foot from the start, as all that we see is build up to the big finale, which basically means that the pay off has to be pretty good otherwise the whole film will fall apart. The final twist, in fact, doesn't really do the build up justice; but it's not absolutely terrible, and I would still rate this film as at least 'good', but just don't tune in expecting anything brilliant. This is certainly no 'M', for example. The plot follows a young woman that goes on holiday and meets a charming middle-aged man. The two later get married and she accompanies him back to his house where she meets his son, and finds his collection of rooms, one of which is kept locked up. What is the secret beyond the door...?

Fritz Lang's bleak cinematography and haunting use of music help to create the atmosphere that a story of this nature needs in order to work effectively. The focus on the door helps to create the tension as to what the secret is throughout the movie, and Fritz Lang seems keen to capitalise on that as we see Joan Bennett's narration change from how she feels personally to driving herself crazy as she tries to decipher what's behind the door. The characters in the story are interesting, and they need to be as this film is mostly character based. We follow Celia Lamphere, and we are given her thoughts by way of the aforementioned narration. Narration is often found in scripts that have been written by people that don't know how to write good scripts. However, in this case it actually helps the film to move along. In order for the story to work, we need to know what the character is feeling, so in this case narration is helpful to the story.

As I've mentioned, the ending isn't all that good, but the suspense builds nicely and there's much to like about this film. If you're new to Fritz Lang, though, I certainly recommend the classics 'M' and 'Metropolis' before this, and also from his American films; 'Fury', 'Scarlet Street', 'Beyond a Reasonable Doubt' and 'While the City Sleeps' get my thumbs up.

Celia Barrett is a New Yorker with a trust fund and one of the city's most eligible single women. On a trip to Mexico she meets and falls for the charming Mark Lamphere, and later the couple marry. Returning to his home and pushing him to let her finance his passion for collecting "rooms", Celia starts to suspect that all might not be right with this perfect man she has landed and indeed the secrets in his house and in his past soon start to mount.

I watched this on the back of positive reviews from a couple of people on this site; perhaps I should have read further though because I didn't find the wonderfully intelligent noir that they claimed to have seen. Perhaps these commentators have not seen the film Rebecca which sort of covers similar themes but does it much, much better than this film does, but for me I found it hard to care about this. Visually I liked it and credit to Lang because his direction and work with his cinematographer does produce some really well set up scenes that do have great atmosphere. However this is not repeated in the material which is not as intelligent as it would like to think itself. Indeed it is terribly overwrought and melodramatic and offers little to counter it.

As a result the cast have to thanklessly play it up the best they can. I thought than Bennett did as good a job as she could have hoped to have done. She isn't brilliant though but she plays detective well. More important but not much cop is Redgrave; OK the blame lies more on the material than in his performance but given how little was conveyed by words at times, his performance was important but not up to the task.

Overall then, a fairly overdone melodrama that doesn't really convince in how it uses psychoanalysis to inform and direct its narrative. It may look great but the substance just isn't there from the start right down to the insultingly simplistic final scene.

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.

What lies in room no.7? It is permanently locked and becomes Celia's object of curiosity. Also in the house are 3 slightly spooky other characters - Redgrave's sister Caroline (Anne Revere), his son David (Mark Dennis) from a previous marriage and his secretary Miss Robey (Barbara O'Neil). Its a good film, but I think if I was a woman I would have left him pretty early on in the relationship! While I could see where the film was heading, the actual ending is not what I expected. It's a spookily filmed story and it's quite memorable.