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This heavy-handed bit of trivia serves only to let us see what Jason Robards Jr.'s father looked like.

The son gave us many memorable performances, but on the evidence of this film, the father was mired in the stagger-and-clutch school that we can't connect with.

The short as a whole is stagy, obvious and unrewarding.

The Warners special effects unit brews up a fine storm at sea, but the human interaction remains stiff and lumbering,intense but clumsy.

To its credit, the film is short.

For collectors only.

Yes, "Rebecca" is a more successful film, and is certainly a more conventional one. "Rebecca's" story is every bit as tripe-y as this one. However "Rebecca" was an A-film, and this one a B+, and that makes a huge difference. Also "Rebecca" is more familiar to movie buffs, and that makes us like it more as an old friend.

Watching "Secret Beyond the Door" is like watching a Douglas Sirk melodrama (also from Universal). The soapy story is not what counts, it's what the director does with it.

Fritz Lang was a superstar director in Berlin when Alfred Hitchcock was an apprentice set designer over from England to learn his craft. The annoyingly familiar elements in the story of this film (Rebecca, Spellbound, Dragonwyck, Bluebeard, Pandora, Masque of the Red Death, Northanger Abbey, Jane Eyre) are the fault of the producer who bought and shaped the material. David Selznick produced "Rebecca." Can you imagine Walter Wanger producing "Gone with the Wind?" No, neither can I.

In this film, what Fritz Lang brings to a second-rate script is fascinating and unique, and it's no use complaining that he's not Hitchcock.

Joan Bennett gives her usual performance. She seems to have done her best work for émigré directors rather than native-born. She did good work for Max Ophuls as well, sort of like Hedy Lamarr but more "street."

Michael Redgrave is interesting here precisely because he is so ambiguous. It's easy to imagine Laurence Olivier on screen courting and seducing an innocent girl. Maxim de Winter is a very familiar character in romantic fiction, from Mr. Rochester in "Jane Eyre" all the way down to the brooding studs of today's Harlequin romances.

Redgrave, by contrast, has a much more elusive character to portray, attracted to a self-possessed woman of the world, but in unbearable pain and unable to give for reasons he does not understand himself. Maxim de Winter knows what his problem is. Mark Lamphere does not.

Redgrave's usual persona is peevish, someone with a private grievance on the verge of meltdown, and that works very well here. So let's not complain that he's not Olivier. Olivier couldn't have played this part so well.

Quick reminder: no director had final cut in those days. A film was cut by the producer and editor while the director had already moved onto other projects. The uneven pacing of this movie is more characteristic of Universal Studios than it is of Lang.

Stanley Cortez deserves full credit for the cinematography, and Miklos Rosza for keeping the story flowing even when the editing lags. At one particularly eerie point, Rosza recorded the music with the orchestra playing the notes in reverse order, then had the soundtrack itself reversed so the notes come out in proper sequence but with unnatural attacks and releases. This is very advanced stuff and works beautifully.

BTW, it was nice to see Joan Bennett flee at night into the thickly foggy countryside. That set was from "The Wolf Man" and she was darned lucky Lon Chaney didn't leap out from behind the tree.

So rather than complain about what this picture isn't, let's celebrate it for what it is. It's not a masterpiece, but no director but Lang could have put together this film with so little sentimentality. His precision makes us uncomfortable and off-balance, but we don't always appreciate dry and cold.

It's funny that so many people remember this telecast from almost 50 years ago. And with such uniformly positive feelings.

I remember the pounding waves and the Long Hall. I remember Robert Shaw as the first Claudius I ever saw who was not only sonorous and regal, but violent, and sexy enough to seduce the Queen and make her agree to kill her husband. I remember Donald Sutherland coming in at the end as Fortinbras, and for once saving the character from being a wimpy, pompous letdown.

Until recently, the film could only be seen in America at the Paley Media Centers in New York and Los Angeles.

However Sir Michael Caine was recently reminded of his participation in this long-forgotten film, and he asked the BBC to resurrect it.

We'll all have a chance to check our memories soon.