The Secret Behind the Door
Film Review (Featuring Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave. 8,865 ft. 99 mins.)
Psychiatrists, presumably, are used to strange tales from their patients. Sometimes they may be inclined to think that nothing about human beings will surprise them. There, however, they underestimate the film-writer’s imagination, for in The Secret Behind the Door there is portrayed a hero whose particular pathological foible might well startle the most impassive doctor. His hatred of his mother, murder of his wife and abnormal interest in all historical wife-murders are routine in the cinema to-day, but this hero achieves originality in his hackneyed role by building on to his house rooms that are in every detail the replica of ones in which in the past a wife has been murdered by her husband. So there are rooms from the palaces of Roman Emperors, rooms from the French Court as well as rooms from England (and the hero’s own house in the middle of all these), His second marriage and the discovery by his wife of the room which is ready to commemorate her death, make a fantastic and unreal tale, though one not without excitement. Many have a fancy for the macabre and that would be sufficient qualification for the film. But since this is a film of 1948, there must be a psychological explanation as well. If this part of the film were a caricature of psychology it would be amusing (I thought it was a skit at first and laughed heartily, but that was a mistake). Briefly, it all goes back to one unfortunate incident at the age of 10, when the hero went to bed and his mother promised to come and kiss him good-night before going out. But his sister locked the door, so his mother did not come in. There was lilac about at the time, so although the incident became buried in his subconscious, lilac was apt to bring on those feelings of wife-murder which the incident naturally caused. In the end when the second wife filled a large vase with lilac, he realized the connection and they lived happily together ever after.
It is not only psychological themes that are a matter of routine in the cinema to-day, but the treatment of these themes is beginning to follow a set pattern: certain action and certain expressions are now certain accompaniments of morbid behaviour on the screen. The look that comes over Michael Redgrave’s face when his wife’s unfortunate choice of lilac for a buttonhole makes him want to kill her is the same expression as Eric Portman had in Wanted for Murder when he, too, was driven to murder unwillingly. The unseeing walk, distant expression, twitch of the hands, together with that unmistakable look, make up the psychological killer on the screen. The Secret Behind the Door runs true to type in all these ways. It is so typical, in fact, that it is difficult to recall it clearly, apart from the many other films of the same kind. P.E.W.
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