Fritz Lang directed Secret Beyond the Door, a psychological thriller film noir that is a modern and loose updating of the Bluebeard fairytale.
Grade: B
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Theatrical release poster
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It was produced by Lang’s Diana Productions, and released by Universal Pictures.
The film stars Joan Bennett and was produced by her husband Walter Wanger.
The story concerns a woman who suspects tha her new husband, an architect, plans to kill her.
The behavior of architect Mark Lamphere turns strange after his honeymoon with his bride Celia, who begins to realize that Mark is a man of many faces and secrets.
It turns out that he was married before, and that his wife had died suspiciously and they have a son. He also has a loyal secretary named Miss Robey, whose face is disfigured.
Mark appears to be delusional and could be intending to murder Celia inside a room thar he keeps locked.
In the end, the disturbed Miss Robey ends up setting fire to the house, whereupon Mark redeems himself by saving Celia’s life.
The narrative is murky and obvious to qualify as a major art film, but some of the visuals are impressive.
Intertextuality/Films of Similar Interests
Unfortunately, the film was considered to be too close to Hitchcock’s superior 1940 noir Rebecca, which won the Best Picture Oscar.
Like Mandalay in Rebecca, Secret Beyond the Door is set in an isolated mansion, here a baroque Mexican villa, which also has mysterious rooms. Also like Hitchcock’s film, the husband had been married before and is now tormented by guilt and manic-depressive. Mark, however, goes beyond Maxim de Winter, and at one point he almost strangles her with a scarf, which, of course, has a symbolic meaning).
Like Rebecca and Spellbound, it’s the woman who needs to be patient and ultimately strong in her belief that she can cure her masochistic and obsessive husband of his guilt and traumatic past so that they can restart together a new, healthier marriage, based on love and trust.
Inevitable comparisons were also made to Cukor’s 1944 psychological thriller, Gaslight, in which a greedy husband (Boyer) is trying to rob off his richer wife (Ingrid Bergman) by turning her insane.
Visually, all three films are samplers of film noir, relying on chiaroscuro lighting and other devices.
Cast
Joan Bennett as Celia Lamphere
Michael Redgrave as Mark Lamphere
Anne Revere as Caroline Lamphere
Barbara O’Neil as Miss Robey
Natalie Schafer as Edith Potter
Paul Cavanagh as Rick Barrett
Anabel Shaw as Intellectual Sub-Deb
Rosa Rey as Paquita
James Seay as Bob Dwight
Mark Dennis as David Lamphere
Credits:
Produced, directed by Fritz Lang
Screenplay by Silvia Richards, story by Rufus King
Cinematography Stanley Cortez
Edited by Arthur Hilton
Music by Miklós Rózsa
Production companies: Walter Wanger Productions; Diana Production Company
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date: December 24, 1947
Running time: 99 minutes
Box office $700,000
The film recorded a loss of $1,145,000.
When the film was first released, critic Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was of mixed opinions: “If you want to be tough about it—okay, it’s a pretty silly yarn and it is played in a manner no less fatuous by the sundry members of the cast. But Mr. Lang is still a director who knows how to turn the obvious, such as locked doors and silent chambers and roving spotlights, into strangely tingling stuff. And that’s why, for all its psycho-nonsense, this film has some mildly creepy spots and some occasional faint resemblance to Rebecca which it was obviously aimed to imitate.”
Variety called it arty and almost surrealistic. The motivations of the characters were described as occasionally murky.
