<i>"Un'appropriazione di Hitchcock su larga scala": lo sfortunato caso di</i> Dietro la porta chiusa

Abstract

Secret Beyond the Door (1948) has often been underestimated by the major film critics who wrote on Fritz Lang's American productions. The reason may be found in the weak success the film got at the box office and on the papers' reviews. In recent times, the film has been re-discovered as a fascinating intertextual experiment by which Lang appropriates and reshapes several thematic and formal elements Alfred Hitchcock had used in his films from the Forties. This hypothesis was accepted by Lang himself, who admits in a famous interview with Peter Bogdanovich to have drawn inspiration, in making Secret Beyond the Door, from Hitchcock's smashing American success Rebecca (1940). This essay focuses on the production of the film, on its narrative and technical elements, and analyses the complex intertextuality that ties the creative worlds of Lang and Hitchcock.