Copyright 8 March 1948 by Diana Productions, Inc. Released through Universal-International Pictures Co., Inc. Presented by Walter Wanger. New York opening at the Winter Garden: 15 January 1948. U.S. release: February 1948. U.K. release: December 1948. Australian release: 15 April 1948. Sydney opening at the Victory. 8,869 feet. 98 minutes.It's a funny thing but this film really grows on you after you've seen it a few times. In fact, on a third outing I found it quite disturbing. Admittedly the viewings were separated by some years but the initial response of disappointment and belief that it was not a typical Lang film have now changed with the latest sighting to a conviction that here indeed is the typical Fritz. You see I have now discounted some of the initial feelings about it being just a women's soap opera with Babs O'Neil making a fair fist of a sort of poor woman's Mrs Danvers. The film is very, very lavishly produced (it's not till the third viewing that you work out that the "rooms" would have to be models in order to contain the expense) and very atmospherically photographed and has a stinger of a score by Rozsa. Now that we've got the soap opera elements out of the way we can see details that we missed like the gypsy knife fight and the very idea of collecting rooms and the background of the characters. Admittedly, the denouement is still a bit hard to take - just how nuts is Redgrave, does he really mean to kill B and if so why? Miss B is given the lion's share of the camera with flattering costumes and even an off-screen commentary (the sudden switch at the climax to an off-camera commentary by Redgrave is another element that doesn't work) but she is no Joan Fontaine. Still it's a film that certainly repays re-viewing, its sets, its score, its atmosphere and any film photographed by Cortez is a MUST-SEE anyway.

Joan Bennett is always good and reliable and worth seeing, and so is Michael Redgrave, no matter how weird characters he makes, and this is one of the weirdest. As a pychological thriller it's not quite credible, Joan Bennett showing some astonishing carelessness in now and then going into panic, and Michael Redgrave unable to control himself almost as a somnambulist. The supporting characters are almost more interesting, and the boy seems to be the only clever one. What actually makes this film is the effects, above all Miklos Rosza's always tremendous music, but also Fritz Lang's knack of conjuring some magic, here especially Joan Bennett losing herself in dark corridors - it happens demonstrably frequently in this film. All these effects tend to tower up to some exaggerated theatricalness, while as a psychological thriller it would have been more efficient with less. But it's great cinematic magic, all the way to the end.

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.

All the ingredients are there for an engaging story of a brooding widower with a distant young son who marries a lost young woman and brings her home to his house of mystery. In the hands of the usually brilliant Fritz Lang, however, comes a story so unbelievable and pretentious that the results are so melodramatically ridiculousness that sometimes you really don't believe what is transpiring on screen.Like the film version of "Rebecca", this starts with the heroine (Joan Bennett) narrating the beginning of the tale, going into the saga of how she went through losing her older brother and gained a fortune, and ended up falling in love with a brooding man (Michael Redgrave) whom she met on vacation. He forgets to tell her that he is a widower and a father, and that his house is planted with infamous rooms recreated from actual crime scenes. Anne Revere gives a nuanced portrayal of his loving but somewhat overbearing sister (who basically takes care of the young son), while Barbara O'Neil goes down Mrs. Danvers territory as the scarred secretary that was on the verge of being fired before rescuing the son from a fire.Natalie Schafer is amusing as Bennett's best friend ("I'm not as poisonous as I look", she tells Redgrave upon their first meeting) who is part of a tour Redgrave takes some party guests on to view the remakes of the rooms Redgrave collects. She is the first person to point out the mysterious locked door which Redgrave refuses to open, making Bennett mighty suspicious. But curiosity killed the cat and threatens to do in the second wife, leading to a melodramatic conclusion that seems totally ripped off from "Rebecca".Even Joan Bennett admitted this film was a fiasco, her over-acting here sometimes out of tune with her usually excellent performances. Redgrave as the brooding hero actually tones down his performance, giving what mystery there is there some interest. It's just too bad that the results are so ridiculously silly, since the film is beautifully photographed and almost Gothic in nature. While the acting certainly could have been better, the fault for what results lies in the hand of director Lang who seemed to be going for a sense of romance, mystery and film noir which never gels.