Great Film overall

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

'Secret Beyond the Door' is far from Fritz Lang's greatest (American)films, but that should be enough for real film-noir fans. The film supposed to be Lang's version of (much much better) 'Rebecca' - a psychological film-noir. There are some similarities between the two film, but 'Secret Beyond the Door' might seem too melodramatic and camp to capture the exact eerie feel like Hitchcock does with 'Rebecca'. These two films have been compared so much, I think I don't need to fall into deeper with my analyses between them two.'Secret Beyond the Door' still manages to be captivating and entertaining enough. Joan Bennett's trance like narration about closed door in herself, gives the film kind off dream like vibe. As one of the main character is running a magazine about architecture, then it is even more enjoyable to look how Lang have used architecture and how important role it plays in the film.Melodramatic, but murky psycho thriller.

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¨ .

Boy, what a total let-down it was (after giving this potentially promising 1947 picture 99 minutes of my time) to find out that the secret beyond the door was nothing but an absurd "WTF?" moment (which, because it was expected to be taken as dead-serious, was, in turn, reduced to being completely laughable).As far as I'm concerned, Secret Beyond The Door was truly 1940's psycho-drama at its most pathetic, predictable and preposterous.Not only did this picture make Fritz Lang look to me like an incompetent boob, when he was apparently supposed to be a very respected, Hollywood director (this isn't the first film of his that I've felt this way about his directorial skills) - But when it came to Miklos Roza's music score, which was not only frequently far too loud and out of sync with the action taking place on the screen, but, like Lang's direction, there was a heavy-handedness to it that rendered it as being amateurish entertainment.Another thing that lost this picture some major points was its leading actress, Constance Bennett, who was nothing but a detestable clotheshorse. This woman must've changed her outfits at least 20 times throughout the course of the story. And no matter what the situation in the story was, you could be sure that Bennett was immaculately coiffed and over-dressed in the most ridiculous 1940's fashions imaginable.About the only thing worth watching in the entirety of this picture was its fairly intriguing opening sequence which showed an otherworldly image of a misty pond. As the camera slowly followed the gentle ripples circling across its surface, strange forms could be faintly glimpsed at down below.Other than that rather hypnotic opening sequence, Secret Beyond The Door was, pretty much, nothing but a clunky, cluttered mess of sheer nonsense.

A Freudian thriller from director Fritz Lang. Good performances from Michael Redgrave and Joan Bennett can't disguise the fact that it is a revamp of Hitchcock's Rebecca. The locked doors that Redgrave's character collects equate to the locked part of his mind which his newly wed bride (Bennett) can't reach. This atmospheric thriller is supported by chilling music written by the great Miklos Rosza and shimmering black and white cinematography by Sidney Cortez. Anne Revere and Barbara O'Neil support the leads effectively. An entertaining thriller that tends to get bogged down occasionally by too much psychiatric rhetoric.