Secret Beyond the Door...

1947

Action / Drama / Film-Noir / Mystery / Romance / Thriller

10
IMDb Rating 6.6/10 10 6298 6.3K

noir new york city jealousy post-traumatic stress disorder post traumatic stress disorder mexico

Plot summary

After a whirlwind romance in Mexico, a beautiful heiress marries a man she barely knows with hardly a second thought. She finds his New York home full of his strange relations, and macabre rooms that are replicas of famous murder sites. One locked room contains the secret to her husband's obsession, and the truth about what happened to his first wife.

Director

Fritz Lang Photo
Fritz Lang

Top cast

Natalie Schafer Photo
Natalie Schafer as Edith Potter
Virginia Brissac Photo
Virginia Brissac as Sarah
Michael Redgrave Photo
Michael Redgrave as Mark Lamphere
Joan Bennett Photo
Joan Bennett as Celia Lamphere
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
911.13 MB
968*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 39 min
Seeds 5
1.83 GB
1440*1072
English 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 39 min
Seeds 10

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Lejink 6 / 10

The Suspicion of Spellbound Rebecca by Gaslight

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.
Reviewed by MartinHafer 3 / 10

What does it take to get this woman to leave?!

"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!
Read more IMDb reviews

No comments yet

Be the first to leave a comment