Secret Beyond the Door (1948)
Directed by Fritz Lang

Film Review

Secret Beyond the Door is one of Fritz Lang's better American films - chillingly atmospheric and beautifully shot in the style of the classic film noir directors of the period.  It's very nearly a return to Lang's earlier fantasy horror films of the 1920s and 1930s, with Freudian references, long shadows and a lurking sense of menace.  There's even a sequence where Lang cleverly uses his former expressionistic style to convey the mental derangement of the film's principal male character.  Unfortunately, whilst the film is stylistically brilliant, some stilted dialogue and slightly wooden acting weaken its impact, and the narrative relies too heavily on tedious psychobabble for the ending to be either convincing or satisfying.  These deficiencies aside, it's still possible to appreciate this film for its artistic merits and also to take some pleasure in the teasing Hitchcockian-style suspense.

Film Synopsis

When Celia, a young heiress, meets Mark Lamphere, a successful architect, it is love at first sight.  They are in Mexico at the time and something about the atmosphere of this strange primitive land heightens Celia's romantic feelings and makes her sure that she has found herself the perfect husband.  They marry not long afterwards, and it is only then that Celia begins to have second thoughts.  Her anxieties begin when she finds out that Mark has a son from an earlier marriage and that his first wife died in suspicious circumstances.  There is also something about Mark's secretary, Miss Robey, that deeply troubles Celia.  But what most intrigues her is the locked door in Mark's mansion.  Increasingly, Celia becomes convinced that her husband is concealing something terrible in the room behind the door.  Is it possible that Mark intends killing her, just as he killed his previous wife...?