Secret Beyond the Door Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Secret Beyond the Door Blu-ray Movie Review

Fritz Lang's 'Rebecca's Suspicion'.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 31, 2012

See if this sounds familiar: an emotionally fragile woman with a large family fortune at her beck and call meets a suave and debonair English gentleman (with a dimpled chin, no less), marries him and then begins to think that he may be out to murder her, perhaps to move on to her riches. Ring any bells? Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion has been a problematic film in the director’s vaunted oeuvre since it “copped out” from its source novel’s formulation of a slimy if charming and cunning man plotting the death of his wife. Hitchcock claimed, perhaps not entirely truthfully, that Suspicion’s happily ever after ending had been thrust upon him unawares, and he insisted for years after the film came out that he would have preferred a darker, perhaps more substantial, take on the subject matter. He might have been thinking of Fritz Lang’s little remembered film Secret Beyond the Door when he made those comments, for the above description, from the wealthy woman to the debonair English husband with the dimpled chin who may be harboring murderous impulses, is equally a propos to this 1947 psychological thriller. This is yet another late forties enterprise fascinated, whether obliquely or not, on psychoanalysis and the roiling nature of the Id. As such, it may remind film fans of yet another Hitchcock outing, his first American film, Rebecca, for like that film, Secret Beyond the Door delves into the emotional content of a wife trying to figure out just why her husband is so obviously troubled. Like Rebecca, Secret Beyond the Door also posits a former wife whose spectral presence may be casting a pall on the current relationship, and again like Rebecca, there's a Gothic mansion full of shadows and mystery and which comes replete with a perhaps devious female who may not have the best intentions for the new wife on the premises.

Secret Beyond the Door is often a moody and weirdly compelling film, but it’s frankly not a great one, especially when measured by the high bar that Fritz Lang regularly set in or out of the noir genre. The problems with this film are manifold, but one the keenest is that this film’s star named Joan, Joan Bennett, has none of the mousy insecurity of the “Joan star” of both Rebecca and Suspicion, Joan Fontaine. Bennett’s character of Celia may in fact have been put through the emotional ringer with some unsuccessful romances in the past, and she’s certainly got her hands full with new hubby Mark (Michael Redgrave), but this is one tough as nails broad who isn’t about to shrink from menacing shadows on the wall.

One of the other major problems with Secret Beyond the Door is its sheer ridiculousness. Mark woos Celia after meeting her on a South American vacation (that’s none other than Gilligan’s Island’s “Lovey” Howell, Natalie Schafer, as Celia’s goofy best friend). They quickly marry, but Mark has forgotten to mention a few little items, like that he’s been married before and is a widower with a troubled teenaged son. If that weren’t enough to raise Celia’s eyebrows, once she gets to Mark’s palatial manse, she finds herself bookended between Mark’s overbearing sister Caroline (Anne Revere) and his bizarre secretary, Miss Robey (Barbara O’Neil), a woman who walks around with a scarf draped off of her left cheek due to a horrible burn she received years previously when she saved Mark’s son from a devastating house fire.

And as if those weren’t enough for Celia to seriously consider a quick annulment, we ultimately find out that Mark has a rather odd habit: he’s an architect, and he has built a little wing of his home that pays homage to several gruesome murders by recreating the rooms in which they took place. Mark, an amateur historian (kind of), has come up with the intriguing theory that a place’s architecture can actually dictate its inhabitants mental states. It’s almost like the inverse of the situation with the great Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge, where external environmental conditions often reflected the poets’ inner states of mind. Mark is happy to take a collection of party goers on a little tour of his little “installation”, and Celia, while looking a bit confused by it all, tags along with nary a word. In fact, most of the chatter comes from a woman who has perhaps my all time favorite character name (actually more of a description), namely “Intellectual Sub-Deb”. Intellectual Sub-Deb (Anabel Shaw) responds to Mark’s recounting of every horrible murder by insisting that if only the perpetrator had had proper psychoanalysis, none of the killing would have ever happened.

The final issue with the film is that very psychoanalytical content. Celia decides she’s going to get to the bottom of Mark’s bizarre behavior, and sets out to be an armchair Freud, as it were. In a room in the wing that Mark has kept locked, but which Celia has of course gained entry to, Celia confronts her own fears that Mark is planning to murder her, while Mark imagines a trial where he has in fact murdered her and is both defendant and prosecutor. When Celia finally uncovers the reason for Mark’s lifelong trauma, many viewers are going to have those raised eyebrows that Celia never seemed to, and will probably be muttering, “That’s it? Man up, Mark!” Without spoiling the rather anti-climactic “surprise” of it all, let’s just say that the cause of Mark’s irrational emotionalism doesn’t exactly rise to the twin traumas the Gregory Peck character experienced in another psychoanalytically obsessed Hitchcock outing, Spellbound (nor in fact does Secret Beyond the Door’s “dream” sequence of Mark’s self-inflicted trial reach the hallucinatory levels of the Salvador Dali designed dream sequences in the Hitch film).

Still, for those willing to either tolerate or outright overlook these flaws, Secret Beyond the Door offers its own peculiar “charms” (for want of a better word). Lang was a master of shading, both literally in terms of how he used his cinematographers (in the case of this film, the great Stanley Cortez) and figuratively in how he culled nuanced performances from his actors. Bennett probably isn’t vulnerable enough to ever ratchet up the film’s supposed fear factor very high, but Redgrave is rather interesting, if sometimes unintentionally funny, as the obviously deeply disturbed Mark. The film finally devolves into an outright Rebecca ripoff in its closing moments, replete with its own quasi-Mrs. Danvers and yet another devastating house fire. Probably the biggest problem with Secret Beyond the Door is how reminiscent it is of several other, better films.

Secret Beyond the Door Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Secret Beyond the Door is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. While there are some minor contrast fluctuations on display throughout this offering, generally speaking this another nice looking black and white catalog release from Olive. The elements do show the typical signs of aging and wear and tear, but the image is generally consistent and decently sharp and well detailed. Stanley Cortez's cinematography is generally very well served by this high definition transfer; any perceived lack of shadow detail was no doubt intentional and done purposefully to augment the moody feel of the film. Black levels are very good to excellent (a couple of shots devolve into slight milkiness), and gray scale is nicely articulated.

Secret Beyond the Door Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Unfortunately Secret Beyond the Door's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track is one of the more anemic and problematic that has accompanied an Olive catalog release (in this case of a Universal International film). Amplitude here is a real problem. I had my home theater system maxed out volume wise and still found a lot of this film, especially Bennett's voiceover narration, really hard to hear at times. There are also numerous issues throughout the track, including rolling waves of noise that almost sound like broadcast static or that high whine you'd get in the pre-digital tuning age when you'd rotate your radio dial between stations. Miklos Rozsa's score is also not very well served by this track, sounding almost hollow in the midrange. No doubt this is the best that could be done with this little remembered title, but it's a shame nonetheless—typically these older films tend to have issues more with their image quality than with their soundtracks, but Secret Beyond the Door is that rare exception.

Secret Beyond the Door Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements of any kind are offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Secret Beyond the Door Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Secret Beyond the Door suffers by comparison to any number of other films, strangely quite a few them helmed by Alfred Hitchcock. Fritz Lang was one of the most expressive (some would say "abstract expressive") directors of his era, so there's plenty here to hold the viewer's interest, but the film itself is just kind of silly and ultimately nondescript, despite its extremely odd, even bizarre, elements and overall moody feel. Lang aficionados will no doubt want to check this out, despite this Blu-ray's lackluster audio. Others may just want to stick with those good old Hitch offerings like Rebecca or Suspicion.