Behind the Door Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Behind the Door Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 5, 2020

My home state of Oregon still deals intermittently with the scars and shame of having “hosted” Japanese internment camps during World War II, when American citizens (many American born citizens) of Japanese descent were deemed “enemy collaborators” overnight due to their ethnicity, were rounded up and placed in isolated environments where they supposedly could do no harm (not that they were doing harm to begin with, of course). There are still rather potent memories about this sad sidebar to the global conflict that broke out in the late thirties and reached a fever pitch in 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and in fact some of the “remembrance services” (for want of a better term) held in Oregon have featured now elderly Japanese folks who, as kids, had to live in these camps for several years and still have very vivid memories of what the whole experience was like. While that anti-Japanese fervor is still perhaps at least partially in mind, there was another nationalistic prejudice on display in the previous global conflict of World War I which may have faded a bit from the general memory, one which plays directly into the plot machinations of Behind the Door, Irvin Willat’s bracing 1919 silent which was largely unseen for decades, and which, while largely reassembled for this Flicker Alley Blu-ray release, is still missing a few snippets of footage due to a lack of careful curation through the ensuing decades after its release.

Behind the Door is bookended by sequences which are set, considering the film's release year of 1919, in the "future" of 1925, when a haggard looking sailor named Oscar Krug (Hobart Bosworth) first mourns at a cliffside grave and then returns to a dilapidated, obviously long abandoned, house. Most of the film, until the final bookending sequence which takes the viewer briefly back to the "future" of 1925, is an extended flashback detailing the trials and tribulations of Krug, whose surname hints at the nationalistic prejudices alluded to above. As World War I breaks out and the "dirty huns" are villainized, Krug finds out that he's persona non grata in his community, despite the fact that he's American born. There's a knock down, drag out fight that results in some pretty gruesome injuries, but Krug wins the day not just in fisticuffs but also by insisting he's going to enlist to serve the American cause. His heroism helps seal the deal with girlfriend Alice Morse (Jane Novak), whose banker father Matthew Morse (J.P. Lockney) is none too pleased that his daughter would even consider marrying a man with German heritage.

The two do marry, but Alice is exiled and ends up stowing away on Oscar's wartime cruiser, which is quite soon thereafter sunk by a German submarine commanded by a guy named Brandt (a sneering Wallace Beery). Oscar and Alice are consigned to a lifeboat, but help seems to literally be on the horizon when a submarine suddenly appears and they think they're saved. There are a few key missing seconds right at this climax (it really seems odd that this absolutely central moment would have been excised and lost at some point along the way), but the bottom line is of course it's the German submarine again, and a series of calamitous events ensues which pits Oscar against Brandt.

Oscar's obsessive quest for vengeance leads to a supposedly gruesome conclusion, one which was evidently notorious during the time of the film's original release, but which is going to probably strike more modern eyes used to absolutely graphic depictions of bodily injury in contemporary horror films as being positively tame, considering the fact that no real mayhem is actually shown, and things are just hinted at broadly. The film isn't particularly stylish in terms of framings, although the nice shots of the "future" Oscar by the hillside grave are rather beautiful. The American version has some interesting and at times fairly aggressive tinting and toning going on, as can be seen in many of the screenshots accompanying this review, something that does help to give the film some visual flair.

Behind the Door Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Behind the Door is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Flicker Alley with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.32:1. There are a couple of informational items vis a vis the provenance of the elements utilized for this transfer and the restoration process. The first of these is a text card that appears before the presentation of the film itself:

Behind the Door was produced by Thomas H. Ince Productions and released 14 December 1919.

No single, complete copy of the film is known to survive.

This restoration is based on an incomplete 35mm print and a separate small roll of shots preserved at the Library of Congress National Audio Visual Conservation Center, and a 35mm copy of a Russian version, based on an export negative preserved at Gosfilmofond of Russia.

In two sequences, still images have been inserted to bridge gaps where motion picture material was not available.

Shot continuity and text for re-created intertitles and bridging stills are based on director Irvin Willat's original script and continuity.

Color tinting and toning have reproduced [sic] based on the laboratory notations in the leaders of the Library of Congress tint.

This restoration was completed in 2016 as a partnership between the Library of Congress, Gosfilmofond of Russia and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

The second is toward the end of a longer essay by Robert Byrne contained within the insert booklet:

Digital restoration of the image was conservatively limited to post-scan stabilization, dust and scratch mitigation, and physical damage repair. All new titles, as well as the missing sequences that have been bridged with still images, are annotated with "2016" in the bottom right corner to indicate that they are newly created elements.

This is one of those presentations where the limitations of the source elements simply can't be ignored. The restoration process was heroic in many respects, but as can probably be gleaned fairly easily from some of the screenshots accompanying this review, there is still copious age related wear and tear in evidence. Some sequences pass by relatively unscathed, though there may be minor nicks and scratches in views, but other sections show considerable damage, including some pretty major emulsion damage. The tinting and toning recreation adds some really interesting hues to the proceedings, but can occasionally lead to some odd looking moments, as in the background of the opening scene, which is bathed in deep cobalt blues, which almost pixellates for a moment during what I imagine may be a density issue with regard to the underlying image. All of this said, I've therefore tried to toe a fine line with my score. The missing sections and pretty recurrent damage levels might argue for something at least a little less generous, while the efforts of the restoration team are probably deserving of a flat out 5.

Screenshots 1 through 10 are from the American version, and screenshots 11 through 19 are from the Russian version.

Behind the Door Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Behind the Door features a great sounding LPCM 2.0 track that features a really fun score by Stephen Horne, who contributes an appealing essay in the insert booklet. The score seems to be a "typical" solo piano silent film accompaniment, but Horne has a few tricks up his sleeve, and his essay seems to suggest that he's kind of a Rahsaan Roland Kirk type in terms of being able to play more than one instrument simultaneously.

Behind the Door Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Russian Version (1080p; 47:10) offers a kind of alternate universe version of the film, with some pretty drastic re-editing and plot shifts. The provenance of this version is described in screenshot 19, which plays before the film. Screenshots 11 through 18 are from the Russian version, which notably does not include the tinting of the American version.


• Original Production Outtakes (1080p; 10:27) play to music by Stephen Horne.


• Kevin Brownlow, Remembering Irvin Willat (1080p; 31:23) offers the famed historian discussing the arguably lesser remembered Willat.


• Restoring Irvin Willat's Behind the Door (1080p; 11:19) is an interesting look at some of the hurdles the restoration team faced.


• Slideshow Gallery (1080p)


• About SFSFF offers a pop up text box with information on the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Behind the Door Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The fact that Behind the Door was evidently considered absolutely scandalous back in the day may strike contemporary viewers as downright odd, but the fact is this 1919 film is surprisingly relevant and provocative in its own way, especially as we continue to debate what it means to be an "American". The star-crossed love angle is a little far fetched, and there's a pretty large age discrepancy between the supposedly married Oscar and Alice, which may undercut some of the emotional impact, but Behind the Door has a strange, hypnotic power that should appeal to lovers of cult silent films. Technical merits are solid with an understanding that the elements utilized for this release still show considerable wear and tear. Recommended.