User Reviews

Fritz Lang's "Secret Beyond the Door" is a moderately interesting noir. The story, like "The Uninvited" and "Shining Victory" is reminiscent of Hitchcock's film "Rebecca." I say Hitchcock's film and not DuMaurier's 1938 novel, because surprisingly, the novel only sold 20,000 copies and was not a success. I imagine the film changed that.

The story concerns a beautiful woman, Celia (Joan Bennett) who falls madly in love with a mysterious and moody man, Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave) whom she meets while on a trip. She goes to live with him at the family home, which is run by his sister (Anne Revere). It's there she discovers a few things. One is that Mark was married before, is a widower, and has a son (Mark Dennis). Mark also has a secretary (Barbara O'Neil) who covers one side of her face with a scarf to cover a scar from a fire. Mark, she finds, also has a wing where he houses a collection of rooms in which famous murders have taken place. There is one room, however, which is always kept locked. Celia wants to know what's beyond that door, and what makes her husband so moody.

"Beyond the Door" takes inspiration from two other Hitchcock films, Spellbound and Notorious, and taps into the postwar interest in psychology. There is a voice-over narration from the troubled Celia, who recounts her dreams. The film is very atmospheric, the music grand and suspenseful and, though one may be able to guess how it ends, the story is very intriguing. The ending, due to some narrative gaps, is somewhat disappointing.

This isn't Lang's best film but one can certainly see the master's touch in the gloom, the fixation on the door, and the cinematography. Joan Bennett (whom I saw in person and was unbelievably tiny) shines as she usually did under Lang's direction. She could play both sophisticated and glamorous as well as trashy and sweet-smart. Here, in a funny way, she combines both - the character is a bit of a classy femme fatale. Redgrave is properly passionate one minute and distant and a little weird the next. I would have loved to have seen someone like Dirk Bogarde tackle this role a few years later.

Derivative but very good.

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¨ .

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

"Secret Beyond the Door..." is a reworking of "Rebecca". While there are plenty of differences, there are enough similarities that you can assume the Daphne Du Maurier was the starting point for the story from "Secret Beyond the Door...". However, there's one huge difference, one that makes the later film harder to enjoy. In "Rebecca", the new wife was naive, young and a bit dim. In "Secret", she (Joan Bennett) is supposed to be much more worldly, educated and older....and so her actions really don't make a lot of sense.

When the film begins, Celia is being castigated by her brother for not settling down and getting married. She tells him she's having too much fun...and has no plans to settle down. Then, inexplicably, she meets a man and almost immediately marries him...though she knows little about Mark (Michael Redgrave). Well, soon after, she learns that he completely misrepresented himself--he'd already been married AND he had a teenage son. These things he casually 'forgot' to tell Celia. At the same time, Mark has gone from clever and sweet to a dark, brooding and obnoxious guy....with apparently little love for Celia. Now at this point, what would any sane woman do? They certainly would NOT stay...and as more and more evidence mounts up that Mark might be insane and dangerous, Celia stays!! Even when he shows off his 'murder rooms'--recreation of rooms where various women were murdered---she stays! Does this make sense? Nope. Did it work in "Rebecca"....well, a heck of a lot better than in this moody, atmospheric but ultimately goofy film that makes little sense. Add to that some inane narration as Celia speaks her mind aloud during much of the movie and you've got a film that looks good but leaves the viewer frustrated...frustrated at how dumb Celia is AND at how there's little in the way of subtlety or intelligence behind all this.

Despite some quality actors and a famous director (Fritz Lang), it's a bad movie that LOOKS good...with lovely cinematography, music and an appropriate mood. Too bad it didn't even end well as has Celia playing armchair psychologist and attempting to cure her psychotic hubby!

The Secret Beyond the Door is Fritz Lang's melodramatic suspense tale that seems to have taken more than it's fair share of influence from Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca. Before the story even starts, we're waiting to find out one thing - what's the secret? This somewhat puts the movie on the back foot from the start, as all that we see is build up to the big finale, which basically means that the pay off has to be pretty good otherwise the whole film will fall apart. The final twist, in fact, doesn't really do the build up justice; but it's not absolutely terrible, and I would still rate this film as at least 'good', but just don't tune in expecting anything brilliant. This is certainly no 'M', for example. The plot follows a young woman that goes on holiday and meets a charming middle-aged man. The two later get married and she accompanies him back to his house where she meets his son, and finds his collection of rooms, one of which is kept locked up. What is the secret beyond the door...?

Fritz Lang's bleak cinematography and haunting use of music help to create the atmosphere that a story of this nature needs in order to work effectively. The focus on the door helps to create the tension as to what the secret is throughout the movie, and Fritz Lang seems keen to capitalise on that as we see Joan Bennett's narration change from how she feels personally to driving herself crazy as she tries to decipher what's behind the door. The characters in the story are interesting, and they need to be as this film is mostly character based. We follow Celia Lamphere, and we are given her thoughts by way of the aforementioned narration. Narration is often found in scripts that have been written by people that don't know how to write good scripts. However, in this case it actually helps the film to move along. In order for the story to work, we need to know what the character is feeling, so in this case narration is helpful to the story.

As I've mentioned, the ending isn't all that good, but the suspense builds nicely and there's much to like about this film. If you're new to Fritz Lang, though, I certainly recommend the classics 'M' and 'Metropolis' before this, and also from his American films; 'Fury', 'Scarlet Street', 'Beyond a Reasonable Doubt' and 'While the City Sleeps' get my thumbs up.

Celia Barrett is a New Yorker with a trust fund and one of the city's most eligible single women. On a trip to Mexico she meets and falls for the charming Mark Lamphere, and later the couple marry. Returning to his home and pushing him to let her finance his passion for collecting "rooms", Celia starts to suspect that all might not be right with this perfect man she has landed and indeed the secrets in his house and in his past soon start to mount.

I watched this on the back of positive reviews from a couple of people on this site; perhaps I should have read further though because I didn't find the wonderfully intelligent noir that they claimed to have seen. Perhaps these commentators have not seen the film Rebecca which sort of covers similar themes but does it much, much better than this film does, but for me I found it hard to care about this. Visually I liked it and credit to Lang because his direction and work with his cinematographer does produce some really well set up scenes that do have great atmosphere. However this is not repeated in the material which is not as intelligent as it would like to think itself. Indeed it is terribly overwrought and melodramatic and offers little to counter it.

As a result the cast have to thanklessly play it up the best they can. I thought than Bennett did as good a job as she could have hoped to have done. She isn't brilliant though but she plays detective well. More important but not much cop is Redgrave; OK the blame lies more on the material than in his performance but given how little was conveyed by words at times, his performance was important but not up to the task.

Overall then, a fairly overdone melodrama that doesn't really convince in how it uses psychoanalysis to inform and direct its narrative. It may look great but the substance just isn't there from the start right down to the insultingly simplistic final scene.

Highly derivative this low-budget film noir thriller may be but with Fritz Lang at the helm, you forget the ridiculous plot and admire instead the cinematography and atmosphere he brings to proceedings. And when I say ridiculous, I mean it, how else to describe a storyline where a widowed architect marries a wealthy city girl and takes her to his big old house in the country where he's made over a number of the rooms into murder tableaux. You might think she'd look for the door marked "Exit", but no Joan Bennett herself gets obsessed with the one room he's locked up, the mysterious number 7 and before too long is making a copy of the key, so she can investigate, naturally at the dead of night.

Being the 40's the Freudian overtones are overpowering, as the husband, Michael Redgrave in his first Hollywood role, seems to be over-reacting to years of unhealthy female influence and dominance in his life as his mood swings like, well, I guess you'd say, a door.

In the background there's an apparently disfigured housekeeper Miss Robey, Redgrave's supportive sister and his difficult, moody son but the main tension is between the leads as it builds gradually to a fiery ending.

The plot may creak at times like an old floorboard, Redgrave and Bennett are somewhat stiff and cold in their parts and the continuity isn't all it could be, but if like me you like film noir settings then this is for you too. Thus we get Bennett's interior monologues, lots of shots of her in front of mirrors, lots of scenes with darkened doors and symbolic keys, and even a shroud-like mist followed by a thunderstorm on the climactic night. There are some great shots of starkly-lit corridors and a wonderfully imaginative dream sequence (yes, it has those too) of Redgrave's where he's prosecuting himself in front of a judge and jury whose faces are in shadow. Dmitri Tiompkin's atmospheric score adds a lot to the overall mystery and dread, particularly at the end.

This may not be Lang's best American film but there was more than enough in it to keep an avowed fan like me keenly watching.

In New York, after the death of her beloved brother Rick Barrett (Paul Cavanagh), the heiress Celia (Joan Bennett) has a brief love affair with Rick's friend and administrator of the funds Bob Dwight (James Seay) and they decide to marry each other. However, Celia travels on vacation to Mexico, where she meets the mysterious owner of a minor magazine Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave) and she has a crush on him. Mark is an eccentric man that collects rooms in his mansion in Blaze Creek and they immediately get married to each other.

Celia travels to Levender Falls and she moves to the mansion. She discovers that Mark's sister Caroline Lamphere (Anne Revere) administrates the manor; his secretary Miss Robey (Barbara O'Neil) also lives there; further, Mark has been previously married with a woman called Eleonor and their rebel and weird son, David (Mark Dennis), also lives in the house.

Mark has a strange behavior but a gives a party to their common friends and he show his rooms, all of them related to men that killed their wives. But he does not open the room number 7 that he always keeps locked. Celia is intrigued and a little scared with the contents of the rooms and she decides to find what Mark keeps locked in the mysterious room.

"Secret Beyond the Door..." is a silly and unbelievable psychological thriller by the great director Fritz Lang, unfortunately with a ridiculous and disappointing conclusion. The story of this Bluebeard is intriguing until the moment that he shows his rooms to his wife and guests. The commercial conclusion with happy end is also terrible. The good thing is the wonderful cinematography in black and white and shadows and the camera work. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "O Segredo da Porta Fechada" ("The Secret of the Closed Door")

This thing is somewhat like Rebecca, in a way. There is an impulsive marriage of a young woman, Celia (Joan Bennett) to a mysterious man, Mark (Michael Redgrave). After the marriage Celia finds out he has been married before, except this time, there is a son by that marriage. And her husband has a personal assistant who is facially deformed and is prone to setting fires. However, Celia is not like Rebecca. She is full of life and not unsure of herself at all.

One night, shortly after their marriage, Mark, an architect, talks about how he "collects" rooms as a hobby at a party at their house. Before the guests go look at the rooms, Celia tells the guests how her husband has said in the past that happy occasions are often tied to the rooms in which they occur. However, this tour is not one of happy events, instead all of the rooms are replicas of rooms in which grisly murders have occurred, and the new husband has the murders and the rooms down to the last detail. The look on Celia's face shows that she is suddenly wondering what exactly is going on in the head of that husband of hers.

And then one more secret..there is a door where Mark is working away on another replica room where Bennett is not allowed to go. Then one day she manages to get in and finds....I'll let you watch and find out. Let me just say if not for the great visual style of Lang, the fact that Michael Redgrave had a knack for being creepy when he wants to and Joan Bennett could aptly project just about any emotion, and don't forget the score, this thing would have been a total washout, because the ideas are not that original and the ending is just not all that it was built up to be, given all of the wind machines, at least not for me.

Fritz Lang's Secret Beyond the Door... (1948) is a movie with a Freudian plot.Celia (Joan Bennett), a pretty New Yorker is about to marry a man she doesn't love.In a trip to Mexico she meets an interesting man named Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave).She marries him instead and soon discovers some alarming details about the man.His mansion is filled with rooms where famous murders took place.One of those rooms is always locked, and Celia must find out what is behind that door.This is a fascinating movie that has been done in a Film-Noir style.Joan Bennett is a perfect lady in the lead.Redgrave's performance as the troubled man is excellent.There are also talents such as Anne Revere, Barbara O'Neil, Natalie Schafer and Anabel Shaw.This is a fine movie for the old movie lovers, whether or not you're into psychology.It's a thrilling tale that will keep you nailed to your seats.And the plot thickens in the end.

Fritz Lang's creepy and atmospheric psychological thriller, 'Secret Beyond the Door (1948),' faces just one major obstacle that prevents it from being a completely satisfying film experience: the story is quite obviously derived from Hitchcock's 'Rebecca (1940),' which happens to be a superior film in almost every regard. This is not to question the talents or originality of Lang, since, of course, he was already an established director before Hitchcock ever got his break, but you can just tell how much this particular work was influenced by the Master of Suspense. Borrowing elements from the then-prevalent film noir movement, and adding shades of post-marriage paranoia from the likes of 'Rebecca' and Cukor's 'Gaslight (1944),' Lang also mixes in snippets of Freudian psychoanalysis, not unlike what I witnessed last week in Hitchcock's own 'Spellbound (1945).' The final product is not without its charm, and contains various moments of precisely-articulated suspense, but you can never overcome that niggling feeling that you've seen it all done better.

Joan Bennett plays Celia, a young lady who acquires a large amount of money after her brother's death and decides to take a holiday. It is here that she meets Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave), a mysterious and charming gentleman who excites in Celia intense suppressed feelings of rebellion and exhilaration. Following their marriage, a hastily-decided proposition that can only lead to trouble, Celia immediately begins to notice peculiarities in her new husband, and, after her arrival at Mark's extravagant residence, she finds the dwelling haunted by the shadow of his previous wife. Mark, it seems, houses an unhealthy preoccupation with murder, and has made a hobby out of collecting entire rooms in which unspeakable atrocities of passion were committed. But what of the one room that is kept securely locked, never to be opened by anyone? Celia concludes that the secret to unlocking the inner depths of her husband's disturbed mind lies within that single room, beyond the forbidden door. Though Silvia Richards' screenplay, from a story by Rufus King, often seems too incredible to take seriously, Lang's film remains an interesting achievement, and is nothing if not entertaining.

I found the promotional material for 'Secret Beyond the Door' to be grossly misleading. The image of Joan Bennett standing before a significantly-distorted door prompted me to expect a film of extreme German Expressionism, in the same vein as 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).' Fritz Lang, who developed his career in Germany during the 1920s, and having often used elements of the style, would presumably have been very adept at recreating the devilishly-twisted labyrinths of the human mind, but the only scene to even approach my stylistic expectations was the appropriately ambiguous and shadowy dream sequence, in which Michael Redgrave both prosecutes and defends his malevolent tendencies in court {this particular scene may even have influenced Hitchcock's heavily-stylised courtroom trial in 'Dial M for Murder (1954)}. The remainder of the film has the appearance of a typical 1940s film noir, with suitably shadowy cinematography by Stanley Cortez, supplemented by a voice-over by Joan Bennett. Also note the similarity between the character of Miss Robey (Barbara O'Neil) and Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) from 'Rebecca,' most particularly in their respective final actions in each picture.

This has been variously called campy, kitsch, rubbish; I think that, along with 'Rancho Notorious', it is Lang's greatest American film (and therefore A great American film). In a decade of male-dominated film noir, Celia Lamphere (loaded name), like the second Mrs. de Winter and Dr. Constance Peterson, must play detective to save her relationship and her life.

Lang uses the trappings of psychoanalysis throughout, promising enlightenment and healing - a large narrative gap, as Mark chases Celia, puts paid to that: this is a pessimistic anti-Freudian film.

It is also one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen - its atmosphere of dream, its cunning use of architecture and space, its complex sexuality, its trance-like narration, its ellipses, angles and shadows, remind me variously of L'Herbier, Dreyer, Resnais, Antonioni, Molly's soliloquy in Strick's 'Ulysses', Perec's 'the Man who Sleeps'. It is a rare Hollywood art-movie, and there's nothing like it.

I enjoyed it much more the second time around. At first it was far too unbelievable. It hardly made any sense then and I never felt I cared what happened. I bought the video because of Joan Bennett and Fritz Lang making another film noir. Now when i saw it, I loved it and just sat back enjoyed all the hokus-pokus fluff that is delivered quite seriously. It´s supposed to be like "Rebecca" and that´s why I didn´t like it the first time. Too many plot holes! There´s even an exotic ms. Danvers type around with a veil...Too much!

Why would Joan marry and stay with someone so utterly stiff and charmless as Michael Redgrave?? The male lead should have been given to someone more mysterious and attractive. They were hoping for a new Laurence Olivier...

Joan is a treat as always. I love how she comes across as a spoiled debutante who can hardly care to utter her lines with any conviction. She´s a good actress -just a bit too laid back at times. I love her, she is so stunningly beautiful and cool in her Hollywood wardrobes.

I love the whole atmosphere of the movie. It´s slow at first and then from the honeymoon in Mexico and forward so mysterious! I love her bedroom with the tapestry! The thing with the room-collecting was quite farfetched but fun. Who would REALLY aquire complete scenes of murders at home???? I´m going to see it again soon and learn some lines. They don´t make them like they used to!

Rather tepid 1940s thriller. Joan Bennett is beautiful, however, as is the cinematography. Really strikingly shot, which makes it well worth watching; it is reminiscent of Spellbound in parts, with a surreal edge to some of the backdrops.

The story, very loosely based on the old Bluebeard fairy tale, is interesting, but the pacing of the film is off, and you never really feel much tension. There are some interesting characters in the house, especially the secretary, but they aren't very developed. So much more could have been done in this area, to make it a truly great film.

Without giving anything away, I doubt many of us would have made the same decision that the main characters did in the end. But don't let that distract you from the truly beautiful fashion of this film.

Another take on the BLUEBEARD/REBECCA type storyline from German auteur Fritz Lang, although I have to say that this is one of his worst movies. The story involves an idealistic young bride who marries a handsome man and moves into his ancestral home only to discover that he's hiding some very dark secrets. Who is the mysterious scarred woman in his home, and what secret is lurking behind door number seven?

There seem to have been hundreds of similarly-themed movies made during the 1940s and this is definitely a lesser effort compared to what's come before (Hitchcock's own version of REBECCA was a masterclass in suspense). SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR is slow and stodgy, with little incident to recommend it. Even worse, despite some impressive sets and locations, there's little of the Gothic atmosphere you'd hope from such a production.

Joan Bennett is a rather cold heroine and not really someone you can support very much. Michael Redgrave (THE LADY VANISHES) is better, but seems a bit miscast in his role - he's too much of a nice guy to really convince as a sinister suitor. Sure, things do pick up for an appropriately exciting climax, but by that stage it's too little, too late.

This film sees Mark (Michael Redgrave) with a psychological problem. There are a few things wrong in his head, eg, he collects rooms where murders have been committed. He lays these rooms out exactly as they were, with original artifacts, at the time the murders were committed and devotes a wing of his house to them. When Celia (Joan Bennett) marries him, she only discovers his passion when a rain storm ruins the outside house-warming party they are giving, and he brings the guests indoors for a tour of the house.

What lies in room no.7? It is permanently locked and becomes Celia's object of curiosity. Also in the house are 3 slightly spooky other characters - Redgrave's sister Caroline (Anne Revere), his son David (Mark Dennis) from a previous marriage and his secretary Miss Robey (Barbara O'Neil). Its a good film, but I think if I was a woman I would have left him pretty early on in the relationship! While I could see where the film was heading, the actual ending is not what I expected. It's a spookily filmed story and it's quite memorable.

This could have been so much better than it is. Starting well with powerful imagery and strong narration, this looks as if it will be a great noirish tale of horror, complete with touches of Freud and surrealism. But no, sad to say that every time this film steps up and begins to soar to some nightmare level, the dumb dialogue drags it back down into fluffy melodrama.

Joan Bennett is fine (thirty years before her governess role in Susperia!) but Michael Redgrave is not, far too flat and dour to play a charismatic (killer?). Bennett, apart from those few visual flourishes and moments of splendour, is probably the best reason to see this. Despite the lines she is given she does her very best and always looks quite splendid especially in those particularly sheer tops she is given to wear in the first half.

With Fritz Lang. Michael Redgrave, Joan Bennett and the supporting cast this movie starts off great. Miss Bennett is so gorgeous, the leading ladies of today must be so jealous while the casting directors must wonder where did all the beauty go, Redgrave is as good as ever I have seen. I know the script can get a bit long toothed but that's just because current films don't rely on story driven movies. Natalie Schafer is such a scene steal-er. I loved this movie. Could not recommend it enough if you have a cold March evening and there is nothing ON TV, just go and bring yourself back to the mid 40's, the fashions, the set dressing will do it and enjoy the masters at movie making doing what they do best.. LOVED IT...