Secret Beyond the Door
In the mid-1940s, Fritz Lang and actress Joan Bennett combined for a trio of magical film noirs that proved important to both careers. Both artists were trying to reinvent themselves: Lang fled his native Germany and made some highly creative espionage and war films, but after the war was looking for a new direction; Bennett could no longer play the ingenue roles she did in the 1930s. Bennett and her husband, Walter Wanger, put together a production company and hired Lang, and the result was two classics — “Scarlet Street” and “The Woman in the Window” — and one bizarre oddity that no one knew what to make of. So naturally, I love “Secret Beyond the Door” the best, and Olive Films has come up with a whale of transfer here. Lang, working with cinematographer Stanley Cortez and production designer Max Parker, cuts loose with bizarre, wildly inventive visuals to illuminate the dreamlike state of its heroine (Bennett), who falls in love with a mysterious man (Michael Redgrave) she met in Mexico. After they marry, she’s convinced he’s killed his former wives — and she’s next. One clue: his habit of faithfully reproducing the rooms of famous murders as add-ons to his mansion! This is one of many films of that era that use Freudian psychology, both as a plot element and as a visual motif. The film operates as an over-the-top delirious remake of Hitchcock’s “Suspicion” and “Rebecca,” but its style is one of a kind. — G. Allen Johnson