Secret Beyond the Door... (1948)

Note des utilisateurs:

6.9/10   

Réalisateur:

Fritz Lang

Writers:

Rufus King (story)
Silvia Richards (screenplay)

Release Date:

1 janvier 1948 (USA)

Genre:

Drame | Film-Noir | Mystery | Thriller

Accroche:

Some Men Destroy What They Love Most!

Plot:

In this Freudian version of the Bluebeard tale, a young, trust-funded New Yorker goes to Mexico on vacation...

Plot Keywords:

Room | Murder | Honeymoon | Motherless Child | Second Wife

Avis des utilisateurs:

Sub-Rebecca melodrama that has its moments visually but no consistency or substance in the material

Ensemble

Joan Bennett	...	Celia Lamphere
Michael Redgrave	...	Mark Lamphere
Anne Revere	...	Caroline Lamphere
Barbara O'Neil	...	Miss Robey
Natalie Schafer	...	Edith Potter
Paul Cavanagh	...	Rick Barrett
Anabel Shaw	...	Intellectual Sub-Deb
Rosa Rey	...	Paquita
James Seay	...	Bob Dwight
Mark Dennis	...	David

Autre(s) titre(s):

Secret Beyond the Door (USA) (alternative spelling)
Le secret au-delà de la porte (Belgium: French title) [fr]
Le secret derrière la porte (France) [fr]

Durée:

99 min

Pays:

USA

Langue:

Anglais

Couleur:

Noir et Blanc

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Son:

Mono (Western Electric)

Classification:

Finland:K-16 | USA:Approved (PCA #12621)

Company:

Diana Production Company

Anecdotes:

In the tour of the three rooms, Mark Lamphere recounts the tales of three murders, all of which are fictional. However in the first room, he mentions the St Bartholomew's Day massacre and the Guise family in France. The massacre is a real historical event, where French Roman Catholics attacked French Huguenots (Protestants) on 24th of August 1572 resulting in many deaths. The Guise family was a leading family in the Roman Catholic faction and may have been involved in the instigation of the unrest and other actions which led to the massacre.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Merci pour le chocolat (2000)

Sub-Rebecca melodrama that has its moments visually but no consistency or substance in the material

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.

I watched this on the back of positive reviews from a couple of people on this site; perhaps I should have read further though because I didn't find the wonderfully intelligent noir that they claimed to have seen. Perhaps these commentators have not seen the film Rebecca which sort of covers similar themes but does it much, much better than this film does, but for me I found it hard to care about this. Visually I liked it and credit to Lang because his direction and work with his cinematographer does produce some really well set up scenes that do have great atmosphere. However this is not repeated in the material which is not as intelligent as it would like to think itself. Indeed it is terribly overwrought and melodramatic and offers little to counter it.

As a result the cast have to thanklessly play it up the best they can. I thought than Bennett did as good a job as she could have hoped to have done. She isn't brilliant though but she plays detective well. More important but not much cop is Redgrave; OK the blame lies more on the material than in his performance but given how little was conveyed by words at times, his performance was important but not up to the task.

Overall then, a fairly overdone melodrama that doesn't really convince in how it uses psychoanalysis to inform and direct its narrative. It may look great but the substance just isn't there from the start right down to the insultingly simplistic final scene.