User Reviews

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.

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¨ .

Secret Beyond the Door is directed by Fritz Lang and adapted to screenplay by Silvia Richards from a story by Rufus King. It stars Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere, Barbara O'Neil and Natalie Schafer. Music is by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography by Stanley Cortez.

After a whirlwind romance, Celia Barrett (Bennett) marries Mark Lamphere (Redgrave) but finds once the honeymoon is over his behaviour becomes quite odd...

A troubled production and troubling reactions to it by the critics and Lang himself! Secret Beyond the Door is very much in the divisive half of Lang's filmic output. Taking its lead from classic era Hollywood's keen interest with all things Freudian, and doffing its cap towards a number of "women in peril at home" films of the 1940s, it's a picture that's hardly original. Yet in spite of some weaknesses in the screenplay that revolve around the psychological troubles of Mark Lamphere, this is still a fascinating and suspenseful picture.

I married a stranger.

Draped in Gothic overtones and astonishingly beautiful into the bargain, it's unmistakably a Lang film. His ire towards the cast and studio, where he was usurped in the cutting room and with choice of cinematographer, led Lang to be very dismissive towards the piece. However, it contains all that's good about the great director. Scenes such as the opening involving a paper boat on ripples of water, or a sequence that sees Mark dream he is in a courtroom full of faceless jurors, these are indelible images. Then there's the lighting techniques used around the moody Lamphere mansion that are simply stunning, with Cortez (The Night of the Hunter) photographing with atmospheric clarity.

Blades Creek, Levender Falls.

Elsewhere the characterisations are intriguing. Mark is troubled by something and we learn it's about women in his life, while his "hobby" of reconstructing famous murder scenes in the rooms of the mansion, is macabre and really puts a kinky distortion in the narrative. Celia marries in haste but is surprisingly strong, her character arc given heft by the fact we think she may well be prepared to die for love. Then there's the house secretary, Miss Robey (O'Neil), a shifty woman with a headscarf covering an unsightly scar on one side of her face, and Mark's young son David (Mark Dennis) who is cold and detached and has some disturbing theories on his father's means and motivations.

Lilacs and locked doors.

Cast performances are not all top grade, and even though Redgrave doesn't push himself to required darker territories, the performances are involving and worthy of the viewer's undivided attention. Rózsa's musical score is a cracker, deftly switching from the romantic swirls that accompany Mark and Celia during their love courting, to being a stalking menace around the Lamphere house and misty grounds when danger and psychological distortion is near by. Technically it's a remarkable movie, where even allowing for some daftness involving the psychobabble, it's a picture that Lang fans can easily love. There are those who detest it, very much so, but if it does hit your spot it will get inside you and stay there for some time afterwards. 8/10

Highly derivative this low-budget film noir thriller may be but with Fritz Lang at the helm, you forget the ridiculous plot and admire instead the cinematography and atmosphere he brings to proceedings. And when I say ridiculous, I mean it, how else to describe a storyline where a widowed architect marries a wealthy city girl and takes her to his big old house in the country where he's made over a number of the rooms into murder tableaux. You might think she'd look for the door marked "Exit", but no Joan Bennett herself gets obsessed with the one room he's locked up, the mysterious number 7 and before too long is making a copy of the key, so she can investigate, naturally at the dead of night.

Being the 40's the Freudian overtones are overpowering, as the husband, Michael Redgrave in his first Hollywood role, seems to be over-reacting to years of unhealthy female influence and dominance in his life as his mood swings like, well, I guess you'd say, a door.

In the background there's an apparently disfigured housekeeper Miss Robey, Redgrave's supportive sister and his difficult, moody son but the main tension is between the leads as it builds gradually to a fiery ending.

The plot may creak at times like an old floorboard, Redgrave and Bennett are somewhat stiff and cold in their parts and the continuity isn't all it could be, but if like me you like film noir settings then this is for you too. Thus we get Bennett's interior monologues, lots of shots of her in front of mirrors, lots of scenes with darkened doors and symbolic keys, and even a shroud-like mist followed by a thunderstorm on the climactic night. There are some great shots of starkly-lit corridors and a wonderfully imaginative dream sequence (yes, it has those too) of Redgrave's where he's prosecuting himself in front of a judge and jury whose faces are in shadow. Dmitri Tiompkin's atmospheric score adds a lot to the overall mystery and dread, particularly at the end.

This may not be Lang's best American film but there was more than enough in it to keep an avowed fan like me keenly watching.

Rather tepid 1940s thriller. Joan Bennett is beautiful, however, as is the cinematography. Really strikingly shot, which makes it well worth watching; it is reminiscent of Spellbound in parts, with a surreal edge to some of the backdrops.

The story, very loosely based on the old Bluebeard fairy tale, is interesting, but the pacing of the film is off, and you never really feel much tension. There are some interesting characters in the house, especially the secretary, but they aren't very developed. So much more could have been done in this area, to make it a truly great film.

Without giving anything away, I doubt many of us would have made the same decision that the main characters did in the end. But don't let that distract you from the truly beautiful fashion of this film.

Fritz Lang's creepy and atmospheric psychological thriller, 'Secret Beyond the Door (1948),' faces just one major obstacle that prevents it from being a completely satisfying film experience: the story is quite obviously derived from Hitchcock's 'Rebecca (1940),' which happens to be a superior film in almost every regard. This is not to question the talents or originality of Lang, since, of course, he was already an established director before Hitchcock ever got his break, but you can just tell how much this particular work was influenced by the Master of Suspense. Borrowing elements from the then-prevalent film noir movement, and adding shades of post-marriage paranoia from the likes of 'Rebecca' and Cukor's 'Gaslight (1944),' Lang also mixes in snippets of Freudian psychoanalysis, not unlike what I witnessed last week in Hitchcock's own 'Spellbound (1945).' The final product is not without its charm, and contains various moments of precisely-articulated suspense, but you can never overcome that niggling feeling that you've seen it all done better.

Joan Bennett plays Celia, a young lady who acquires a large amount of money after her brother's death and decides to take a holiday. It is here that she meets Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave), a mysterious and charming gentleman who excites in Celia intense suppressed feelings of rebellion and exhilaration. Following their marriage, a hastily-decided proposition that can only lead to trouble, Celia immediately begins to notice peculiarities in her new husband, and, after her arrival at Mark's extravagant residence, she finds the dwelling haunted by the shadow of his previous wife. Mark, it seems, houses an unhealthy preoccupation with murder, and has made a hobby out of collecting entire rooms in which unspeakable atrocities of passion were committed. But what of the one room that is kept securely locked, never to be opened by anyone? Celia concludes that the secret to unlocking the inner depths of her husband's disturbed mind lies within that single room, beyond the forbidden door. Though Silvia Richards' screenplay, from a story by Rufus King, often seems too incredible to take seriously, Lang's film remains an interesting achievement, and is nothing if not entertaining.

I found the promotional material for 'Secret Beyond the Door' to be grossly misleading. The image of Joan Bennett standing before a significantly-distorted door prompted me to expect a film of extreme German Expressionism, in the same vein as 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).' Fritz Lang, who developed his career in Germany during the 1920s, and having often used elements of the style, would presumably have been very adept at recreating the devilishly-twisted labyrinths of the human mind, but the only scene to even approach my stylistic expectations was the appropriately ambiguous and shadowy dream sequence, in which Michael Redgrave both prosecutes and defends his malevolent tendencies in court {this particular scene may even have influenced Hitchcock's heavily-stylised courtroom trial in 'Dial M for Murder (1954)}. The remainder of the film has the appearance of a typical 1940s film noir, with suitably shadowy cinematography by Stanley Cortez, supplemented by a voice-over by Joan Bennett. Also note the similarity between the character of Miss Robey (Barbara O'Neil) and Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) from 'Rebecca,' most particularly in their respective final actions in each picture.

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.

A Freudian thriller from director Fritz Lang. Good performances from Michael Redgrave and Joan Bennett can't disguise the fact that it is a revamp of Hitchcock's Rebecca. The locked doors that Redgrave's character collects equate to the locked part of his mind which his newly wed bride (Bennett) can't reach. This atmospheric thriller is supported by chilling music written by the great Miklos Rosza and shimmering black and white cinematography by Sidney Cortez. Anne Revere and Barbara O'Neil support the leads effectively. An entertaining thriller that tends to get bogged down occasionally by too much psychiatric rhetoric.

"Secret Beyond the Door..." is a reworking of "Rebecca". While there are plenty of differences, there are enough similarities that you can assume the Daphne Du Maurier was the starting point for the story from "Secret Beyond the Door...". However, there's one huge difference, one that makes the later film harder to enjoy. In "Rebecca", the new wife was naive, young and a bit dim. In "Secret", she (Joan Bennett) is supposed to be much more worldly, educated and older....and so her actions really don't make a lot of sense.

When the film begins, Celia is being castigated by her brother for not settling down and getting married. She tells him she's having too much fun...and has no plans to settle down. Then, inexplicably, she meets a man and almost immediately marries him...though she knows little about Mark (Michael Redgrave). Well, soon after, she learns that he completely misrepresented himself--he'd already been married AND he had a teenage son. These things he casually 'forgot' to tell Celia. At the same time, Mark has gone from clever and sweet to a dark, brooding and obnoxious guy....with apparently little love for Celia. Now at this point, what would any sane woman do? They certainly would NOT stay...and as more and more evidence mounts up that Mark might be insane and dangerous, Celia stays!! Even when he shows off his 'murder rooms'--recreation of rooms where various women were murdered---she stays! Does this make sense? Nope. Did it work in "Rebecca"....well, a heck of a lot better than in this moody, atmospheric but ultimately goofy film that makes little sense. Add to that some inane narration as Celia speaks her mind aloud during much of the movie and you've got a film that looks good but leaves the viewer frustrated...frustrated at how dumb Celia is AND at how there's little in the way of subtlety or intelligence behind all this.

Despite some quality actors and a famous director (Fritz Lang), it's a bad movie that LOOKS good...with lovely cinematography, music and an appropriate mood. Too bad it didn't even end well as has Celia playing armchair psychologist and attempting to cure her psychotic hubby!

This has been variously called campy, kitsch, rubbish; I think that, along with 'Rancho Notorious', it is Lang's greatest American film (and therefore A great American film). In a decade of male-dominated film noir, Celia Lamphere (loaded name), like the second Mrs. de Winter and Dr. Constance Peterson, must play detective to save her relationship and her life.

Lang uses the trappings of psychoanalysis throughout, promising enlightenment and healing - a large narrative gap, as Mark chases Celia, puts paid to that: this is a pessimistic anti-Freudian film.

It is also one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen - its atmosphere of dream, its cunning use of architecture and space, its complex sexuality, its trance-like narration, its ellipses, angles and shadows, remind me variously of L'Herbier, Dreyer, Resnais, Antonioni, Molly's soliloquy in Strick's 'Ulysses', Perec's 'the Man who Sleeps'. It is a rare Hollywood art-movie, and there's nothing like it.

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.

This thing is somewhat like Rebecca, in a way. There is an impulsive marriage of a young woman, Celia (Joan Bennett) to a mysterious man, Mark (Michael Redgrave). After the marriage Celia finds out he has been married before, except this time, there is a son by that marriage. And her husband has a personal assistant who is facially deformed and is prone to setting fires. However, Celia is not like Rebecca. She is full of life and not unsure of herself at all.

One night, shortly after their marriage, Mark, an architect, talks about how he "collects" rooms as a hobby at a party at their house. Before the guests go look at the rooms, Celia tells the guests how her husband has said in the past that happy occasions are often tied to the rooms in which they occur. However, this tour is not one of happy events, instead all of the rooms are replicas of rooms in which grisly murders have occurred, and the new husband has the murders and the rooms down to the last detail. The look on Celia's face shows that she is suddenly wondering what exactly is going on in the head of that husband of hers.

And then one more secret..there is a door where Mark is working away on another replica room where Bennett is not allowed to go. Then one day she manages to get in and finds....I'll let you watch and find out. Let me just say if not for the great visual style of Lang, the fact that Michael Redgrave had a knack for being creepy when he wants to and Joan Bennett could aptly project just about any emotion, and don't forget the score, this thing would have been a total washout, because the ideas are not that original and the ending is just not all that it was built up to be, given all of the wind machines, at least not for me.

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!

Beautifully shot with shadowy black and white, `Secret Beyond the Door' is visually on the level with the best of Fritz Lang. The opening scene with the church wedding is shot in such a way that you know something sinister is about to happen.

Unfortunately, the storyline contains too many elements which seem to have been lifted directly from Hitchcock's `Rebecca.' I don't want to spoil the film for anyone, but if you have seen `Rebecca' then you can guess the climax of `Secret Beyond the Door' after the first thirty minutes.

Still, `Secret Beyond the Door' stands on its own. But if would have stood much better had the story elements been a bit more original.

Fritz Lang's stately noir vision opens in a thick dream pond and ensues to the skillfully rich Mexican knife fight, where the female lead catches the apprehension of death and longing. Her suitor is a sophisticated scion with a hankering for symmetry. They marry in a cathedral immersed in shadows. Awaiting in the husband's residence are a repressive sister, a gnomish son, and the remembrance of a departed wife, together with the recognition that the "felicitous rooms" assembled by Redgrave are in fact extravagant reproductions of crime scenes. The seventh hall is locked.

Lang's intimate breakdown of the Rebecca story visualizes Mrs. Danvers as a saturnine secretary using warped pretenses to guarantee continual employment, not to mention Lang's painstaking surrealism---circle of candles around a wishing well, brick wall behind a velvet curtain---is to the advantage of an dream-like conflict between female and male delusions. The bride's daydream is an hacienda honeymoon with trembling blades, the groom's is a post-modern oration before judge and jury---"You can't try a man for his thoughts!"---both are at the pity of a world floating between the deterministic and the arcane. A work of doorways and passages, facades and shrouds and people unexpectedly too diminutive for the spaces and images they find themselves drifting into.

The opening in Mexico is packed with circular architecture and images: We first see the Mexican church through a semi-circular archway. The wishing well is first seen as a ring of candles. It unites two of Lang's classic images: circles and fire. The wedding ceremony has an important circular wedding ring. Next we see a round fountain. The lovers on the hammock are seen through a semi-circular arch. A pet bird is on a circular ring. A balcony has curves, its railing full of domed ringlets. We also see the heroine on the hammock, against the backdrop of a round portico. After the heroine goes up to her bedroom, the circular imagery essentially ceases. When she runs downstairs in fright, the architecture is principally rectilinear. In the transitory finale, the couple return to Mexico. The heroine has a blanket teeming with circles.

As soon as the film alters its issue to the husband's psychological troubles, the circles vanish. In their place, we see the heroine moving through an elongated rectilinear hallway in the Mexican hotel, searching for her husband. Later at the mansion, there will be several more rectilinear corridor shots. These will often be tense, overflowing with shadows or at night. The rooms have triangular or oblique imagery. Bennett makes circular light when she inspects.

A character gently submits some Freudian shtick at a house party. Soon, a psychology student will earnestly rationalize psychoanalysis, and says it could cure the acute emotional tribulations illustrated by the murders associated with the rooms. The film does wind up giving rather pat Freudian justifications of violence. Controlling mothers and big sisters are seen as the sources of male brutality. This can be regarded as underestimating this issue, and pardoning men of the guilt.

But as a fan of Fritz Lang, film noir and German Expressionism, I was interested less in the soapy plot than the unusually sweeping use of not only the low-key black-and-white moodiness but madly idealistic, geometrically bizarre sets, in company with patterns painted on walls and floors to denote lights, shadows, and objects, doused with symbolism. As in all of his films, Lang's sets and the transparency of their silhouettes form a metaphysics of structural design, which occasionally speaks volumes but is constantly ominous, and meant to illustrate the bare, exposed and elemental core of things.

Potently invoking Hitchcock's REBECCA (1940) and SUSPICION (1941), Fritz Lang's SECRET BEHIND THE DOOR... shrouds a well-to-do heiress under the unrelieved dread that her husband has an ulterior motive to snuff her (only this time, monetary concern is not a major impetus).

After the death of her brother Rick Barrett (Cavanagh), who bequeaths her a large sum of fortune, Celia (Bennett) is stuck by a coup de foudre while peregrinating in Mexico before her intending marriage with the straight-and-arrow lawyer Bob Dwight (Seay). Told through her voice in her head (a ploy Lang utilizes efficiently to propel the narrative momentum and spell out her inner thoughts), it is interesting to see under what circumstances her eyes meet his for the first time, their attraction shimmers with danger from the very start, ensorcelled by the mystique of Mark Lamphere (Redgrave), the pair hastens to the altar in situ, and Celia becomes Ms. Lamphere, but to her, Mark, the architect is a total stranger, she feels that she has a life-time ahead to get to know a man she truly loves, but even before they set their feet back on the US soil, Mark's labile behavior during their honeymoon pours cold water on Celia's marital anticipation and after the initial disquietude, she is bent on finding out the psychological reason behind that, even it means to put herself squarely in the harm's way.

More and more secrets emerge when Celia moves into Mark's domicile, his previous marriage which leaves him a son David (Dennis), his spinster sister Caroline (Revere), and a (presumably) disfigured secretary Miss Robey (O'Neil), plus the smothering atmosphere and rumors about his mother and first wife, both pushing up daisies now. Mark is in evidence, under a plethora of petticoat sway, especially the hand that rocks the cradle, which might be significantly accountable for his none-too-sane mindset.

But the most startling revelation is that Mark has a macabre hobby of collecting and recreating "murder rooms", a quixotical idea but is effectuated with almost risible formality by everybody acting dead serious about it, as if it is a workaday thing. Celia is further intrigued by the seventh room, which Mark claims it is finished but allows no one to see. The secret behind that closed door will confirm Celia's mortal fear (with Miklós Rózsa's thrilling, sonorous accompaniment in its crescendo), but also emboldens her to put on the caper of an amateur headshrinker and finally disinter Mark's psychopathic roots (lilacs and closed doors are two key clues) once and for all, Lang might take liberty with the high concept of psychoanalysis, but as a cinematic mystery, he holds fast to an arresting, alluring tale (starkly Gothic set design and expressive shadow and mist play are right up Fang's alley) that the couple needs to rescue each other (one mentally and another physically) before forming a salutatory union, in another word, a happy-ever-after trite.

Joan Bennett's star glamor aside, she really strengthens her spine to telegraph a gritty facade that befits a heroine who will sillily go out on a limb and ready to die for the man she loves, and Michael Redgrave's suave persona is intermittently disrupted by the demon sizzling under the skin and makes a persuasive plea in his self-trial figment. Both Anne Revere and Barbara O'Neil leave strong impressions playing the friend-or-foe cards with a beguiling ghost of ambiguity. In the event, SECRET BEHIND THE DOOR... is an above-average entry among Lang's oeuvre, an edge-of-the-seat, albeit derivative startler submersed in his expressionistic conceit and intoxicating syntax.

This could have been so much better than it is. Starting well with powerful imagery and strong narration, this looks as if it will be a great noirish tale of horror, complete with touches of Freud and surrealism. But no, sad to say that every time this film steps up and begins to soar to some nightmare level, the dumb dialogue drags it back down into fluffy melodrama.

Joan Bennett is fine (thirty years before her governess role in Susperia!) but Michael Redgrave is not, far too flat and dour to play a charismatic (killer?). Bennett, apart from those few visual flourishes and moments of splendour, is probably the best reason to see this. Despite the lines she is given she does her very best and always looks quite splendid especially in those particularly sheer tops she is given to wear in the first half.

Fritz Lang's Secret Beyond the Door... (1948) is a movie with a Freudian plot.Celia (Joan Bennett), a pretty New Yorker is about to marry a man she doesn't love.In a trip to Mexico she meets an interesting man named Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave).She marries him instead and soon discovers some alarming details about the man.His mansion is filled with rooms where famous murders took place.One of those rooms is always locked, and Celia must find out what is behind that door.This is a fascinating movie that has been done in a Film-Noir style.Joan Bennett is a perfect lady in the lead.Redgrave's performance as the troubled man is excellent.There are also talents such as Anne Revere, Barbara O'Neil, Natalie Schafer and Anabel Shaw.This is a fine movie for the old movie lovers, whether or not you're into psychology.It's a thrilling tale that will keep you nailed to your seats.And the plot thickens in the end.

Secret Beyond The Door (1947) : Brief Review -

A psycho-murder thriller that goes to the root of evil and I believe you need an architect like Fritz Lang to do that. Secret Beyond The Door is lots of things; it's a murder mystery, it has a psycho murderer, and it has a film noir touch as well. You might find a faint resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rebecca' (1940) and Dickinson's 'Gaslight' (1940), but I think it's okay that way. After all, it's the same formula, same theories up and down and same reference everywhere. A newly married woman, a new house, a secret door, a locked room, and bla bla, you know all the fruits already. It's the juice that's new here. When a lovely woman and her new husband settle into an ancient mansion on the East Coast, she discovers that he may want to kill her. The film uses small small details as thrilling elements. A lot of small things which are almost forgotten, appear again in the end to make you realise that it all began much earlier than you suspected. It goes to the root of evil and does psychoanalysis on the unconscious mind to deliver you a detailed film noir. The entire thing runs with an interesting narration by the lead heroine. She expressed every single situation in detail, her fear, doubts, suspicions, and everything else. She explains everything very intriguingly. Fritz Lang played a great trick, I must say. Without that narration, I don't think this film had any chance of becoming an engaging thriller. Conversational power it is. Joan Bennett delivers one of the finest performances of her career, whereas Michael Redgrave's surrealistic male lead leaves you fascinated. Anne Revere & Barbara O'Neil provide enough support. I have disagreed with almost 60% of the films in that list of '1000 Movies You Must Watch Before You Die', but once in a while, there comes some underrated film, and I'm glad I came across Secret Beyond The Door after the list. Overall, very good, but not for everyone.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest.

In New York, after the death of her beloved brother Rick Barrett (Paul Cavanagh), the heiress Celia (Joan Bennett) has a brief love affair with Rick's friend and administrator of the funds Bob Dwight (James Seay) and they decide to marry each other. However, Celia travels on vacation to Mexico, where she meets the mysterious owner of a minor magazine Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave) and she has a crush on him. Mark is an eccentric man that collects rooms in his mansion in Blaze Creek and they immediately get married to each other.

Celia travels to Levender Falls and she moves to the mansion. She discovers that Mark's sister Caroline Lamphere (Anne Revere) administrates the manor; his secretary Miss Robey (Barbara O'Neil) also lives there; further, Mark has been previously married with a woman called Eleonor and their rebel and weird son, David (Mark Dennis), also lives in the house.

Mark has a strange behavior but a gives a party to their common friends and he show his rooms, all of them related to men that killed their wives. But he does not open the room number 7 that he always keeps locked. Celia is intrigued and a little scared with the contents of the rooms and she decides to find what Mark keeps locked in the mysterious room.

"Secret Beyond the Door..." is a silly and unbelievable psychological thriller by the great director Fritz Lang, unfortunately with a ridiculous and disappointing conclusion. The story of this Bluebeard is intriguing until the moment that he shows his rooms to his wife and guests. The commercial conclusion with happy end is also terrible. The good thing is the wonderful cinematography in black and white and shadows and the camera work. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "O Segredo da Porta Fechada" ("The Secret of the Closed Door")

With Fritz Lang. Michael Redgrave, Joan Bennett and the supporting cast this movie starts off great. Miss Bennett is so gorgeous, the leading ladies of today must be so jealous while the casting directors must wonder where did all the beauty go, Redgrave is as good as ever I have seen. I know the script can get a bit long toothed but that's just because current films don't rely on story driven movies. Natalie Schafer is such a scene steal-er. I loved this movie. Could not recommend it enough if you have a cold March evening and there is nothing ON TV, just go and bring yourself back to the mid 40's, the fashions, the set dressing will do it and enjoy the masters at movie making doing what they do best.. LOVED IT...

'Secret Beyond the Door' is far from Fritz Lang's greatest (American)films, but that should be enough for real film-noir fans. The film supposed to be Lang's version of (much much better) 'Rebecca' - a psychological film-noir. There are some similarities between the two film, but 'Secret Beyond the Door' might seem too melodramatic and camp to capture the exact eerie feel like Hitchcock does with 'Rebecca'. These two films have been compared so much, I think I don't need to fall into deeper with my analyses between them two.

'Secret Beyond the Door' still manages to be captivating and entertaining enough. Joan Bennett's trance like narration about closed door in herself, gives the film kind off dream like vibe. As one of the main character is running a magazine about architecture, then it is even more enjoyable to look how Lang have used architecture and how important role it plays in the film.

Melodramatic, but murky psycho thriller.

Seeking adventure from her dull but comfortable life Celia Lampshire played by Joan Benett makes a trip to Mexico, it is there she meets chillingly cold dumb dull boring completely charmless arrogant obnoxious and unpleasant Mark Lamphere played by Michael Redgrave.

For some reason these two hit it off, the chemistry between them is amazing but in the negative, if Lauren Bacall and Bogart were like introducing Nitro to Glycerin, then these two are like introducing Liquid to Nitrogen.

The musical direction is on a complete physco trip, in one scene Marks Sister is talking calmly and smiling to Celia next to her dressing table but the music is almost exploding (and awful).

The story is completely uninspired and simply too obvious to be entertaining it plods along wasting your time, but you will not care what happens either to him or her, or indeed why he is the self obsessed plonker that he is.