Monday | April 15, 2002 9:15 pm

Secret Beyond the Door

Screening on Film

Directed by Fritz Lang.
With Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere.
US, 1947, 35mm, black & white, 99 min.

The second and last film of Diana Productions, Secret Beyond the Door is a psychological thriller and a Gothic drama. Mark Lamphere (Redgrave), obsessed by the link between architecture and death, recreates rooms in which women have met violent ends. It is not surprising that his new wife (Bennett) soon starts to wonder if she is the next victim. The plot reworks and updates the Bluebeard legend, reflecting the influence of Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Spellbound as well as the contemporary American obsession with Freudian psychoanalysis. Secret Beyond the Door, above all, offered Lang a further showcase for his expressionistic mise-en-scène.