Secret Beyond the Door (1947)
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.
- Fritz Lang
- William Holland
- Silvia Richards
- Rufus King
Rating: 6.5/10 by 141 users
Alternative Title:
O Segredo da Porta Fechada - BR
Het Geheim achter de Deur - NL
Country:
United States of America
Language:
English
Runtime: 01 hour 39 minutes
Budget: $0
Revenue: $0
Plot Keyword: new york city, jealousy, mexico, post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), love of one's life, single parent, clerk, architect, honeymoon, fetishism, psychoanalysis, room, neurosis, lilac, sigmund freud, film noir
I rather enjoyed this film - Fritz Lang leaves much of the intrigue to emanate from own imagination. "Celia" (Joan Bennett) meets and quickly falls in love with Michael Redgrave ("Mark"), an enigmatic gent from a family that has known better days. They decamp to his remote family mansion where she meets his sister, and his teenage son - of whom she was hitherto unaware. Things all start to take a turn for the strange once she arrives; her husband collects "rooms" - he recreates the rooms where historically macabre events have happened. There is a room in their home that he keeps locked - what's inside? Her paranoia, fuelled by some eerily lit scenarios and a good, suspicion-arousing performance from Redgrave gradually builds into quite a tense denouement. It has shades of "Rebecca" (1940) about it - the sister "Caroline" (Anne Revere) assuming the role of the mysteriously obsessive third party and there is enough ambiguity going on to keep it interesting until the end.
