Secret Beyond the Door

Last updated
Secret Beyond the Door
SecretBeyondtheDoorPoster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Fritz Lang
Screenplay by Silvia Richards
Story byRufus King
Produced byFritz Lang
Starring
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 (1947-12-24)
Running time
99 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1.5 million [1] or $615,065 [2] or $1.8 million [3]
Box office$700,000 [3]

Secret Beyond the Door is a 1947 American film noir psychological thriller and a modern updating of the Bluebeard fairytale, directed by Fritz Lang, 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 black-and-white film noir drama is about a woman who suspects her new husband, an architect, plans to kill her.

Contents

Plot

Celia (Joan Bennett), a rich New York heiress, remembers on her wedding day how she refused all proposals in New York, came to Mexico for a vacation, and instantly fell in love with the architect Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave). They have a happy honeymoon until she playfully locks him out of their hotel room, at which point he turns unaccountably cold toward her, and suddenly leaves her to return to his New England home for what he says is business.

She follows him, and when she turns up at the large mansion which he designed and built, she discovers that he is actually a widower with a small son. This boy, David, is being looked after by Mark’s sister Caroline (Anne Revere) and his trusted secretary, Miss Robey (Barbara O’Neil), whose face was scarred saving David’s life in a fire and who wears a scarf to conceal the disfigurement. Celia makes friends with David easily, but is uneasy about Mark’s mood swings, especially when Caroline hints that he caused his first wife Eleanor’s death; was it by making it clear he did not love her after the birth of David so that she pined away, or worse? Caroline also tells of having to lock Mark in his room when he was a boy. Celia is even more uneasy when Mark displays to their party guests the suite of special rooms he has had built on a special gated corridor in the mansion. Each of the first six rooms is an exact reproduction of a famous murder scene, and there is a seventh room which is locked and which Mark refuses to show.

Celia, wondering if the seventh room shows the scene of Mark’s murder of Eleanor, cuts down one of their bedroom candles to soften the wax and make a wax impression of the room’s key. While doing this, she catches Miss Robey without her concealing scarf, and learns that she had plastic surgery and her face is perfect again. She was pretending to be still disfigured to keep Mark and Caroline's gratitude for saving David and avoid being fired from her job, and she was hoping to marry Mark herself until Celia turned up. Celia promises not to tell on her.

Mark is disturbed at the unequal height of the two candles in the bedroom. Celia receives the copy of the key she had made to the seventh room, enters it and recognizes it as an exact duplicate of her and Mark’s bedroom. She concludes that it does indeed commemorate the death of Eleanor until she notices that the dresser candles are uneven in the same way they are in the real bedroom now. The room is to display not Mark’s past murder of Eleanor but his future murder of her. She runs away.

Mark has a daydream of being tried in a shadowy court, where he admits that he has a strong compulsion to kill Celia even though he loves her. He left her in Mexico to avoid doing this, but now the urge is back and he must leave her again. He dismisses Miss Robey for disloyalty, having noticed her deceit about her scar, and he and Caroline have a quarrel where she claims to be furious about having to run everything by herself and he is angry at her controlling him all her life.

Celia returns because she loves Mark, and he is alarmed because it means they will be alone in the house together. He tries to leave her again to save her life, but his compulsion overcomes him and he goes back. He finds Celia sitting waiting for him in the seventh room. She tells him she is there because she’d rather die than live without him. She channels the psychological theories advanced about murderers at the party (by a character billed only as “Intellectual Sub-Deb”), and begs him to remember what happened in his childhood to make him this way. And he does! When he was ten, his adored mother promised to read to him before she left to go dancing, but he found himself locked in his room as she departed. His pounding and screaming were in vain, and his love for his mother was transmuted into hate which was transferred to Celia when she locked the door of their honeymoon room. He advances on her to strangle her with a scarf. Celia reveals that it was Caroline, not their mother, who locked him in; he accepts this, and the scarf falls from his hand. They then notice smoke and fire; Miss Robey, thinking Celia is in the room alone and really wanting to continue as the dominant woman in Mark’s life, has locked the door and set fire to the house. Mark manages to kick the door open, escape the house, and go back for Celia when she collapses.

On an idyllic terrace, Mark tells Celia that she killed the root of evil in him that night, but he has a long way to go. She tells him they will go that way together.

Cast

Release

The film recorded a loss of $1,145,000. [1]

Secret Beyond the Door was released in the UK on DVD in November 2011 by Exposure Cinema. [4] Olive Films released the film in the United States on DVD and Blu-ray on September 4, 2012. [5]

Reception

When the film was first released, film 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." [6] Variety called it arty and almost surrealistic. The motivations of the characters were described as occasionally murky. [7]

New York’s PM was highly critical in 1948: “what they [Wanger, Lang, Bennett and Redgrave] have come up with is an utterly synthetic ‘psychological’ suspense incredibility wrapped in a gravity so pretentious it is to laugh, wherein all the actors stalk and stare like zombies while the sound track babbles fancy words.” [8]

Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader called the film's murkiness a strength. [9] Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 54% of 13 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 5.5/10. [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bluebeard</span> French folktale

"Bluebeard" is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom", and "Fitcher's Bird" are tales similar to "Bluebeard". The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word Bluebeard the definition of "a man who marries and kills one wife after another". The verb bluebearding has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Bennett</span> American actress (1910–1990)

Joan Geraldine Bennett was an American stage, film, and television actress, one of three acting sisters from a show-business family. Beginning her career on the stage, Bennett appeared in more than 70 films from the era of silent films, well into the sound era. She is best remembered for her film noir femme fatale roles in director Fritz Lang's films—including Man Hunt (1941), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945)—and for her television role as matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in the gothic 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows, for which she received an Emmy nomination in 1968.

<i>Prick Up Your Ears</i> 1987 British film

Prick Up Your Ears is a 1987 British film, directed by Stephen Frears, about the playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell. The screenplay was written by Alan Bennett, based on the 1978 biography by John Lahr. The film stars Gary Oldman as Orton, Alfred Molina as Halliwell, Wallace Shawn as Lahr, and Vanessa Redgrave as Peggy Ramsay.

<i>Talking Heads</i> (British TV series) British television drama series

Talking Heads is a 1988 TV series of dramatic monologues written for BBC television by British playwright Alan Bennett. The first series was broadcast on BBC1 in 1988, and adapted for radio on BBC Radio 4 in 1991. A second series was broadcast on BBC Two in 1998. They have since been included on the A-level and GCSE English Literature syllabus. Some episodes aired on PBS in the United States as part of its Masterpiece Theatre programme.

<i>Dead of Night</i> 1945 British film

Dead of Night is a 1945 black and white British anthology supernatural horror film, made by Ealing Studios. The individual segments were directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer. It stars Mervyn Johns, Googie Withers, Sally Ann Howes and Michael Redgrave. The film is best remembered for the concluding story featuring Redgrave and an insane ventriloquist's malevolent dummy.

<i>An Englishman Abroad</i> 1983 television film directed by John Schlesinger

An Englishman Abroad is a 1983 BBC television drama film based on the true story of a chance meeting of actress Coral Browne with Guy Burgess, a member of the Cambridge spy ring who spied for the Soviet Union while an officer at MI6. The production was written by Alan Bennett and directed by John Schlesinger. Browne stars as herself.

<i>The Woman in the Window</i> (1944 film) 1944 film by Fritz Lang

The Woman in the Window is a 1944 American film noir directed by Fritz Lang and starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, and Dan Duryea. It tells the story of a psychology professor who meets a young femme fatale and murders her lover in self-defense.

<i>They Do It with Mirrors</i> 1952 Miss Marple novel by Agatha Christie

They Do It with Mirrors is a detective fiction novel by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1952 under the title of Murder with Mirrors and in UK by the Collins Crime Club on 17 November that year under Christie's original title. The US edition retailed at $2.50 and the UK edition at ten shillings and sixpence (10/6). The book features her detective Miss Marple.

<i>The Unsuspected</i> 1947 film by Michael Curtiz

The Unsuspected is a 1947 American mystery film noir directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Claude Rains, Audrey Totter, Ted North, Constance Bennett, Joan Caulfield, and Hurd Hatfield. The film was based on the 1946 novel of the same title by Charlotte Armstrong. The screenplay was co-written by Bess Meredyth, who was married to director Curtiz.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belle Gunness</span> Norwegian-American serial killer

Belle Gunness, born Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth, nicknamed Hell's Belle, was a Norwegian-American serial killer who was active in Illinois and Indiana between 1884 and 1908. Gunness is thought to have killed at least 14 people, while some sources speculate her involvement in as many as 40 murders making her one of the most prolific female serial killers in history. Gunness seemingly died in a fire in 1908, but it is popularly believed that she faked her death. Her actual fate is unconfirmed.

<i>The Killian Curse</i> New Zealand TV series or program

The Killian Curse is a New Zealand kidult horror-fantasy television show, directed by Thomas Robins and Wayne Vinton. Starring Nick Blake and local New Zealand children, The Killian Curse tells the 21 stories of the students from Room 21, who must each face an evil curse placed on them by the sinister Charles Killian. Killian wants to get revenge on the people who caused his death shortly after founding the school in 1906. He needs to capture eleven souls to rise from the dead. There are two series which first aired in 2006 and 2008.

<i>The Lady Vanishes</i> 1938 film by Alfred Hitchcock

The Lady Vanishes is a 1938 British mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, the film is about an English tourist travelling by train in continental Europe who discovers that her elderly travelling companion seems to have disappeared from the train. After her fellow passengers deny ever having seen the elderly lady, the young woman is helped by a young musicologist, the two proceeding to search the train for clues to the old lady's disappearance.

<i>Man Hunt</i> (1941 film) 1941 film by Fritz Lang

Man Hunt is a 1941 American political thriller film, directed by Fritz Lang and starring Walter Pidgeon and Joan Bennett. It is based on the 1939 novel Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household and is set in Europe just prior to the Second World War. Lang had fled Germany into exile in 1933 and this was the first of his four anti-Nazi films, which include Ministry of Fear, Hangmen Also Die!, and Cloak and Dagger. It was Roddy McDowall's first Hollywood film after escaping London following the Blitz. Man Hunt was one of many films released in 1941 that were considered so pro-British that they influenced neutral members of the U.S. public to sympathize with the British side in World War II.

<i>Topper Returns</i> 1941 film by Roy Del Ruth

Topper Returns is a 1941 American supernatural comedy thriller film directed by Roy Del Ruth and written by Jonathan Latimer. The third and final installment in the initial series of supernatural comedy films inspired by the novels of Thorne Smith, it succeeds Topper (1937) and Topper Takes a Trip (1938).

<i>Parlor, Bedroom and Bath</i> (1931 film) 1931 film

Parlor, Bedroom and Bath is an American pre-Code comedy film starring Buster Keaton, released by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer in 1931. It was Keaton's third talking picture after his successful silent career.

<i>Shadow on the Wall</i> (1950 film) 1950 film by Pat Jackson

Shadow on the Wall is a 1950 American psychological thriller film directed by Patrick Jackson and starring Ann Sothern, Zachary Scott and Gigi Perreau and featuring Nancy Davis. It is based on the 1943 story Death in the Doll's House by Hannah Lees and Lawrence P. Bachmann.

<i>The Haunted Bedroom</i> 1919 film

The Haunted Bedroom is a lost 1919 American silent drama film directed by Fred Niblo and starring Enid Bennett and Dorcas Matthews. The film was also distributed under the title The Ghost of Whispering Oaks.

<i>Twin Beds</i> (1942 film) 1942 film by Tim Whelan

Twin Beds is a 1942 American comedy film directed by Tim Whelan, and starring by George Brent and Joan Bennett. It was distributed by United Artists. The screenplay was written by Kenneth Earl, Curtis Kenyon and Eddie Moran, based on the play of the same name by Salisbury Field and Margaret Mayo.

<i>They Met in the Dark</i> 1943 British film

They Met in the Dark is a 1943 British comedy thriller film directed by Karel Lamač and starring James Mason, Joyce Howard and Edward Rigby. The screenplay concerns a cashiered Royal Naval officer and a young woman who join forces to solve a murder and hunt down a German spy ring. The film features a single song sung by Phyllis Stanley, "Toddle Along". The film is very loosely based on the 1941 novel The Vanishing Corpse by Anthony Gilbert.

<i>All Fall Down</i> (Carter novel)

All Fall Down (2015) is a young adult novel by teen-fiction author Ally Carter. It is the first book in the Embassy Row series set in and around the diplomatic quarter of a Mediterranean capital city. The concept for the book was in the making from 2007, but only began being written in 2013. The second book of the series, See How They Run, was released on December 22, 2015. The third, and final book in the series, Take The Key And Lock Her Up, was released at the end of December, 2016; with some regions getting it in January, 2017.

References

  1. 1 2 Matthew Bernstein, Walter Wagner: Hollywood Independent, Minnesota Press, 2000 p443.
  2. ↑ Flynn, Charles; McCarthy, Todd (1975). "The Economic Imperative: Why Was the B Movie Necessary?". In Flynn, Charles; McCarthy, Todd (eds.). Kings of the Bs : working within the Hollywood system : an anthology of film history and criticism. E. P. Dutton. p. 30.
  3. 1 2 "Diana Pic Top U Loser". Variety. 2 February 1949. p. 6.
  4. ↑ Jones, Clydefro (November 16, 2011). "Secret Beyond the Door". The Digital Fix. Archived from the original on February 20, 2015. Retrieved February 20, 2015.
  5. ↑ Rich, Jamie S. (September 11, 2012). "Secret Beyond the Door". DVD Talk . Retrieved February 20, 2015.
  6. ↑ Crowther, Bosley. The New York Times , film review, "'Secret Beyond the Door,' With Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave, Has Premiere", January 16, 1948. Accessed: July 12, 2013.
  7. ↑ "Review: 'Secret Beyond the Door'". Variety . 1947. Retrieved February 20, 2015.
  8. ↑ Ager, Cecelia.”’Secret Beyond Door’ Leads to Empty Room.” PM, 16 January 1948, 16.
  9. ↑ Rosenbaum, Jonathan (2 February 2007). "Secret Beyond the Door". Chicago Reader . Retrieved February 20, 2015.
  10. ↑ "Secret Beyond the Door (1948)". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved February 20, 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.