the audience applauded

Simply A Masterpiece

Did you people see the same film I saw?

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Joan Bennett is always good and reliable and worth seeing, and so is Michael Redgrave, no matter how weird characters he makes, and this is one of the weirdest. As a pychological thriller it's not quite credible, Joan Bennett showing some astonishing carelessness in now and then going into panic, and Michael Redgrave unable to control himself almost as a somnambulist. The supporting characters are almost more interesting, and the boy seems to be the only clever one. What actually makes this film is the effects, above all Miklos Rosza's always tremendous music, but also Fritz Lang's knack of conjuring some magic, here especially Joan Bennett losing herself in dark corridors - it happens demonstrably frequently in this film. All these effects tend to tower up to some exaggerated theatricalness, while as a psychological thriller it would have been more efficient with less. But it's great cinematic magic, all the way to the end.

Pseudo-Hitch intriguing drama about a woman who gradually realizes she is married to a killer and may be next on his list .This classic suspense film contains emotion , intrigue , chills, and evocative scenarios . When a lovely as well as wealthy heiress named Celia (Joan Bennett) spends a fun holiday she meets a good-looking guy called Mark Lamphere and ends up falling in love with him . Later on , she marries the widower (Michael Redgrave's first American film) and finds out weird happenings about him . She and her new husband, settle in an ancient mansion on the East coast, she discovers he may want to kill her . Understandably , she wonders what plans he might have for her . The mansion has got a lot of rooms that are replicas of known murder sites . 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.Dazzling Hitch/style suspense movie about a beautiful woman marries a rare man with a shock revelation around every corner their mansion . It packs hallucination , treason , Bennett plays a rich wife trying to help her hubby , well played by Michael Redgrave , who is suffering from amnesia and who might be a murderer too . The picture takes elements from classic Hitchcock films , carrying out a crossover among ¨Suspicion ¨, ¨Spellbound¨ and ¨Rebeca¨ . In fact ,Fritz Lang's attempt to do his version of Rebeca (1940) was a project fraught with disaster. It ran over budget and over schedule, while Lang was at constant loggerheads with his leading lady, Joan Bennett . As it stars the great Joan Bennett , being compellingly directed by Lang ; but it is not as outstanding as their former movies together : ¨Man hunt¨, ¨The woman in the window¨ and ¨Scarlet street¨. Support cast is pretty good such as Anne Revere as Caroline Lamphere , Barbara O'Neil as Miss Robey and Paul Cavanagh as Rick Barrett . Atmospheric as well as mistly cinematography in black and white by Stanley Cortez . Thrilling and frightening musical score by the classic Miklos Rozsa . The motion picture was professionally directed by Fritz Lang . Lang directed masterfully all kind of genres as Noir cinema as ¨Big heat , Scarlet Street and Beyond a reasonable doubt¨ , Epic as ¨Nibelungs¨, suspense as ¨Secret beyond the door, Clash by night¨ , Western as ¨Rancho Notorious and Return of Frank James ¨ and of course Adventure as ¨Moonfleet¨ .

I love Joan Bennett. I love Sir Michael Redgrave. I love Fritz Lang. Whatever inspired them to produce this unhappily weak-kneed event as collaborators is the real mystery. Bennett can do no wrong for me, generally - just looking at her porcelain beauty is awesome in and of itself - and Redgrave, with The Lady Vanishes and Dead of Night and The Importance of Being Earnest - equals the best of the English actors easily; Lang's productions are usually beguiling. The supporting characters - Anne Revere and Barbara O'Neill and Natalie Schaeffer - do their shtick and if you like them - and I do - then you'll be happy. But as an all-around feature it lacks significantly in the realm of acting, writing and production. What was intended to be some representation of a Mexican some place or other was clearly put together with a moment's forethought and left hanging out to dry. All in all, a sorry piece of business.

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. After a whirlwind romance, Celia Barrett (Bennett) marries Mark Lamphere (Redgrave) but finds once the honeymoon is over his behaviour becomes quite odd... A troubled production and troubling reactions to it by the critics and Lang himself! Secret Beyond the Door is very much in the divisive half of Lang's filmic output. Taking its lead from classic era Hollywood's keen interest with all things Freudian, and doffing its cap towards a number of "women in peril at home" films of the 1940s, it's a picture that's hardly original. Yet in spite of some weaknesses in the screenplay that revolve around the psychological troubles of Mark Lamphere, this is still a fascinating and suspenseful picture. I married a stranger. Draped in Gothic overtones and astonishingly beautiful into the bargain, it's unmistakably a Lang film. His ire towards the cast and studio, where he was usurped in the cutting room and with choice of cinematographer, led Lang to be very dismissive towards the piece. However, it contains all that's good about the great director. Scenes such as the opening involving a paper boat on ripples of water, or a sequence that sees Mark dream he is in a courtroom full of faceless jurors, these are indelible images. Then there's the lighting techniques used around the moody Lamphere mansion that are simply stunning, with Cortez (The Night of the Hunter) photographing with atmospheric clarity. Blades Creek, Levender Falls. Elsewhere the characterisations are intriguing. Mark is troubled by something and we learn it's about women in his life, while his "hobby" of reconstructing famous murder scenes in the rooms of the mansion, is macabre and really puts a kinky distortion in the narrative. Celia marries in haste but is surprisingly strong, her character arc given heft by the fact we think she may well be prepared to die for love. Then there's the house secretary, Miss Robey (O'Neil), a shifty woman with a headscarf covering an unsightly scar on one side of her face, and Mark's young son David (Mark Dennis) who is cold and detached and has some disturbing theories on his father's means and motivations. Lilacs and locked doors. Cast performances are not all top grade, and even though Redgrave doesn't push himself to required darker territories, the performances are involving and worthy of the viewer's undivided attention. Rózsa's musical score is a cracker, deftly switching from the romantic swirls that accompany Mark and Celia during their love courting, to being a stalking menace around the Lamphere house and misty grounds when danger and psychological distortion is near by. Technically it's a remarkable movie, where even allowing for some daftness involving the psychobabble, it's a picture that Lang fans can easily love. There are those who detest it, very much so, but if it does hit your spot it will get inside you and stay there for some time afterwards. 8/10