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

Product Information

Starring Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere, Barbara O'Neil, Natalie Schafer, Paul Cavanagh, Bob Dwight .

Clothing-Concealed Injury: Miss Robey wears a scarf at all times to hide the disfiguring facial scars she received recusing Mark from a fire as a child. Except she had plastic surgery to remove the scars during her last vacation. She keeps wearing the scarf because she fears the family's sympathy is the only reason she is keeping her job. 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.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. Psychiatry, plus a suggestion of the Bluebeard legend, plus a lot of Gothic glooms, was the essence of Fritz Lang's thriller… When Mark does show up he exhibits an entirely different personality, acting alternately nervous and angry. An elaborate open house initially breaks the mood until Mark decides to show his guests his personally designed "felicitous rooms". Celia has heard of these and expects them to be happy places. They are instead elaborate shrines to notorious murder scenes through history, a macabre gallery of horrors. If that's not enough, the Levender Falls house has a room #7 that nobody is allowed to enter. Now half convinced that she has married a madman, Celia determines to discover for herself the secret beyond the door. 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.

I also don't know what her problem would be with her performance which is convincing and has the range of someone who does fall in love - look at her in that scene at the Mexican cafe when she falls for Michael Redgrave, it's a directed-acted-written moment that doesn't miss a beat for emotional impact - and then as soon as her husband shows off his, ahem, 'rooms' (that display murders that have happened, not in that house just, you know, *elsewhere* right?) And Redgrave, though given a character we mostly have figured out from the start, is solid as an uptight widower (or is he??) After a whirlwind romance, Celia Barrett (Bennett) marries Mark Lamphere (Redgrave) but finds once the honeymoon is over his behaviour becomes quite odd... 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.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. Pet the Dog: A literal example. One of the reasons Celia can't give up entirely on Mark is that she sees him bring home a hurt dog and bandage his leg. 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. She meets there three people whose existence she had not suspected: her husband's sister, who has been running things and wants to carry on (does anyone remember Judith Anderson's Mrs. Danvers in 'Rebecca'?); his secretary, who had hoped to marry him, and always wears a scarf round her face to hide scars from a fire; and his rather hostile son, who had no more been mentioned than the fact of a previous marriage…