Secret Beyond the Door [Remastered Special Edition] [DVD]

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I'm late to the conversation but I watched this movie as well when it aired a couple weeks ago. I thought this movie was odd, but I strangely liked it. The ending reminded me of Rebecca, but it also seemed so random. If Barbara O'Neil's character was supposed to be like Mrs. Danvers, I wish that she'd been featured more. I think that Fritz Lang could have easily combined Barbara O'Neil and Anne Revere's characters into a single Mrs. Danvers-esque character. Neither woman's character really seemed all that important to the overall storyline. I was so used to seeing Revere playing the dour humorless woman, that seeing her in a contemporary setting and actually smiling was somewhat off-putting. I get that her character was older than Michael Redgrave's and that he'd spent his entire life being controlled by a woman, whether it was his mother or his sister; but I wished that her presence was more ominous, more creepy. O'Neil was just a weird character and she didn't really lend anything to the story, other than her being employed by Redgrave out of guilt more than anything else. I was happy when Redgrave's son left the story. This is terrible, but his voice got on my nerves and I didn't want to hear it anymore. Rufus King's novel Museum Piece No. Thirteen, upon which the film was based, also appeared in the Dec 1945 issue of Red Book magazine under the title The Secret Beyond the Door. The film opens with a voice-over narration spoken by Joan Bennett. Contemporary sources indicate that British actor Michael Redgrave made his U.S. film debut in the picture, although RKO's production of Mourning Becomes Electra (see above), which Redgrave filmed immediately afterward, was released just prior to Secret Beyond the Door. According to contemporary sources, director Fritz Lang wanted Milton Krasner as director of photography, but Bennett, a partner with Lang and producer Walter Wanger in Diana Productions, insisted that Stanley Cortez be used. Contemporary sources reveal Lang's first choice for Mark Lamphere was James Mason. In addition, modern sources note that Ring Larder, Jr. was initially considered as the film's screenwriter and that the final script, by Silvia Richards and Lang (uncredited), took nearly a year to complete. 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. This recap of Why Women Kill season 2, episode 1, “Secret Beyond the Door”, and Why Women Kill season 2, episode 2, “The Woman in the Window”, contains spoilers.

Antagonistic Offspring: Mark's son, David. Not to Celia (as one would normally expect), but to Mark. 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... Rosenbaum, Jonathan (2 February 2007). "Secret Beyond the Door". Chicago Reader . Retrieved February 20, 2015. Art Shift: Mark's Inner Monologue about his guilt is filmed as a courtroom scene in which Mark acts as both prosecutor and defendant in front of a faceless judge and jury. Not-So-Harmless Villain: The viewer is led to believe that Miss Robey is a Red Herring Mole, especially after her secret is revealed halfway through the film. However, later, it becomes apparent that Miss Robey is prepared to kill for revenge.She suggested that everything after Joan Bennett screams when she sees a man in the mist is Redgrave's dream, hallucination, or justification. If you recall, the next scene after the scream is where Redgrave puts himself on trial. JF proposed that the rest of the film is how Redgrave would like things to have been, instead of the reality of his having killed Joan after she screamed. The supernatural suggestion goes even further when Celia flees the mansion into a fogbound grove of trees, only to see a menacing male figure approaching through the mist, like Death himself. It isn't too much of a leap to theorize that this scene (just three or four shots) inspired one of the nightmares in the cult horror classic Dementia/Daugher of Horror. Alma sews her dress overnight but stops when she runs out of needles. She searches for one in the attic but finds a brooch with a tag encrypting "February 14th, 1945" from Enid Dolan. She shows this to her daughter but doesn't know who bought it. Scooter later arrives at Rita's house and the two get sex with each other. However, Carlo wakes up and hears noises. Suspecting it to be Rita and her lover, he tries to catch them in the act but falls down to the stairs. At the day of the party, Alma appears with her new dress and Rita lies about Carlo's cause why he is in the hospital. Vern stalks Scooter outside of his place and takes a photograph of a woman going inside Scooter's room. It is revealed that the woman is Dee and that they are both lovers. At the party, Alma talks to a woman who recognizes Alma's cameo brooch, revealing that it belonged to her deceased Aunt Enid who died at Valentines Day. Rita receives a phone call from a doctor and tells her that Carlo is alive but will need her assistance since he can no longer move. 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! Admittedly, the denouement is still a bit hard to take - just how nuts is Redgrave, does he really mean to kill B and if so why? Miss B is given the lion's share of the camera with flattering costumes and even an off-screen commentary (the sudden switch at the climax to an off-camera commentary by Redgrave is another element that doesn't work) but she is no Joan Fontaine.

Vern follows Scooter on the streets and finds him entering a diner. There, he meets Dee, who gets suspicious of him. Bertram and Maisie gets drunk and sing along to each other. Upon arriving to Maisie's place, she invites him over but he rejects her offer. The next day, Alma goes shopping to buy a new dress for the party. She founds a dress she likes but is more expensive. Unable to afford the dress, she decides to recreate the dress with her own sewing materials. At the Castillo's, Rita and Carlo are having dinner but Carlo drinks instead rather than eating. He reveals that he suspects that Rita is cheating on him but she denies it. He insults her by reminding her that he once paid her. Rita gets mad and decides to cut off his drink but he threatens her about her lover. As they go to sleep, she calls Scooter and tells him that there has been a change of plans. I think the best character in this film was definitely Joan Bennett. I liked the idea that she would basically be turned on by Michael Redgrave and the other man fighting, and she seemed even more turned on when the thrown knife narrowly missed stabbing her hand. I wish that her motivation for marrying Redgrave would have been made a little more clearer, or if we'd seen more scenes of him romancing her or something. While it most definitely was an impetuous decision on their parts, it comes across as a very naive decision as well. I am okay with the whirlwind romance, but I think there needed to be more exposition. I liked her scenes at the end. Though much like other 1940s films that depict psychology, it seems that Michael Redgrave's therapy session (so to speak) and Joan's assessment of his condition seemed a bit rushed and too pat. This is a man who builds replicas of rooms where famous murders took place and we're supposed to believe that his whole issue boils down to being constantly dominated by women? Now he's cured and they'll live happily ever after?Mommy Issues: Mark had a troubled relationship with his mother, and in fact with every other woman in his life. Celia Barrett is a New Yorker with a trust fund and one of the city's most eligible single women. On a trip to Mexico she meets and falls for the charming Mark Lamphere, and later the couple marry. Returning to his home and pushing him to let her finance his passion for collecting "rooms", Celia starts to suspect that all might not be right with this perfect man she has landed and indeed the secrets in his house and in his past soon start to mount. 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. Secret Beyond the Door is a 1948 Film Noir thriller directed by Fritz Lang, starring Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave.

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. Jones, Clydefro (November 16, 2011). "Secret Beyond the Door". The Digital Fix . Retrieved February 20, 2015. Like the film version of "Rebecca", this starts with the heroine (Joan Bennett) narrating the beginning of the tale, going into the saga of how she went through losing her older brother and gained a fortune, and ended up falling in love with a brooding man (Michael Redgrave) whom she met on vacation. He forgets to tell her that he is a widower and a father, and that his house is planted with infamous rooms recreated from actual crime scenes. Anne Revere gives a nuanced portrayal of his loving but somewhat overbearing sister (who basically takes care of the young son), while Barbara O'Neil goes down Mrs. Danvers territory as the scarred secretary that was on the verge of being fired before rescuing the son from a fire. The Blue Beard: Mark's last wealthy wife, Eleanor, died under his care. He also "collects" rooms where murders have taken place, especially where husbands have killed their wives.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.