Secret behind the door

Young secured American Celia Barrett ( Joan Bennett ) has several times refused to marriage at the last moment. Her parents died, and all the property of the family is managed by her only elder brother, Rick, who suffers from an incurable disease. Before he dies, Rick creates for Celia a significant trust fund managed by their family lawyer, Bob Dwight, who cherishes the hope of marrying Celia, but she does not want to. Celia and her friend are going on a trip to Mexico. One day they become witnesses of a knife fight between two men for a woman. Celia’s enthusiasm for this scene draws the attention of American architect Mark Lumfir ( Michael Redgrave ). An irresistible mutual passion emerges between Celia and Mark, and within a few days Celia enters into a rash and rash marriage, knowing almost nothing about her chosen one. During his honeymoon, Mark is unexpectedly summoned for his magazine to New York. Mark asks Celia to go straight to his family estate in Lavender Falls (near New York), where they should meet. Celia arrives by train to Lavender Falls, where she is met not by Mark, but by his sister Caroline Lamfir ( Ann Revere ), who reports that Mark is lingering in the city. Arriving at the house, Celia unexpectedly learns that Mark has a teenage son, David. Caroline also introduces Celia to Mark's secretary, Miss Roubie ( Barbara O'Neill ), who constantly wears a headscarf hiding a part of her face that was burnt during a fire, during which she saved little David. When Celia finally meets Mark at the station, he somehow strangely reacts to a lilac flower in her buttonhole, coldly kisses her and leaves for the bank on business. Celia understands that Mark magazine is experiencing great financial difficulties and is on the verge of bankruptcy. At a big reception at Lumphire's house, Bob tells Celia that he suspects that Mark might have married her for money. Mark shows his house to the guests, including a gallery of rooms where he reproduced exactly the interiors of the rooms in which real shocking husbands murdered their wives. Celia is surprised that Mark rather sharply refuses to show her the last locked room in his gallery. A few days later, Celia intervenes in a tense argument between Mark and David. David later tells her that he will never reconcile with Mark, who, he believes, killed his mother. When Celia asks Mark how his first wife died, he refuses to answer and moves away from her. In Mark's office, Celia sees the key to the locked room. At the same time, she accidentally learns that Miss Roubie has long had no scar under a headscarf. Miss Roubie admits that she is in love with Mark, and he knows about it. Mark, as she believes, would have fired her long ago, but does not do this precisely because she was disfigured by saving his son. Celia manages to make a duplicate key and get inside the mysterious room. She is surprised to find that this room is an exact copy of her bedroom, and concludes that Mark is going to kill her, and has prepared this room especially for his collection. Celia runs away from home, but returns the next morning, deciding to help her husband get rid of a serious mental illness. Mark, meanwhile, dismisses Miss Roubie, and Caroline decides to move to the city. When Celia and Mark are left alone in the house, she goes to a locked room and waits for Mark, who soon arrives with the intention to kill her. Celia manages to make him remember some of the events of his childhood associated with his mother, whom he loved very much, but once she locked him in the room with a key to make love with a man. This childhood trauma led to his severe mental distress, part of which became uncontrollable attacks of hatred for women. At this moment, the jealous and vengeful Miss Roubie sets fire to the house, a strong fire quickly covers all the rooms. At the climax, something changes in Mark's mind, and instead of killing Celia, he saves her from the fire. Having got out into the wild, Mark and Cilia are ready to start a new life without mutual suspicion.

Systematically injected psychological stress, perfectly transmitted through the studio of cameraman Stanley Cortes and the nervous music of Miklos Rogy , as well as the excellent play of Bennett and Redgrave are among the greatest strengths of the picture. However, despite the exciting visuals and musical accompaniment, the film is noticeably inferior to the previous joint work of Lang and Bennett (which they themselves spoke about). The main drawbacks of the film are rooted in a weak, taut and unworked script, which also looks like a compilation of two recently released films by Alfred Hitchcock “ Rebecca ” and Suspicion . "Lang manages to convey the same feelings of Gothic horror and suspense that are Hitchcock’s pictures, however, his attempt to fill the thriller with Freudian psychoanalysis is not very convincing. According to the authors, Mark’s psychological disorder lies in the hatred of his mother, who betrayed him by joining another man. On that day, lilac blossomed, and Mark continued to suffer misanthropy, which worsened during the days when lilac blossomed. This explanation of Mark’s psychological problems is not sufficiently motivated, as well as the return of escaped Celia to a mortal danger for her the husband, and the arson, organized by Miss Roubie. The presence of some potentially significant and psychologically interesting, but in fact, deprived of the independent role of the characters, such as Bob, David and Caroline, looks like an ill-founded story nnym and it serves only for the common filling pattern.

• Joan Bennett - Celia Lamfere
• Michael Redgrave - Mark Lamfir
• Ann Revere - Caroline Lemfir
• Barbara O'Neill - Miss Roubie
• Natalie Schafer - Edith Potter

• The secret behind the door on the site IMDB  
• The mystery behind the door on the site Allmovie