Submarines became a theme in several of producer Thomas Ince's films related to World War I, as I outline in my Ince biography. Some of the motifs of Ince's False Faces and Civilization reappeared shortly; in Moving Picture World, Ince announced that he had "launched Hobart Bosworth in a specially prepared version of Gouverneur Morris' Behind the Door. In this production I have used the sea and submarines in a series of startling pictures which, I believe, will prove one of the screen sensations of the year." $10,000 was paid for the rights to the story. Morris, a prominent author, was an admirer of Ince who visited him at the studio on several occasions.
Released at the end of 1919, Behind the Door looked back at the Great War from the perspective of several years in the future, 1925, in depicting atrocities. Captain Oscar Klug (Bosworth) returns home to his Maine town, "alone, forlorn and forgotten." There he finds the dilapidated remnants of his taxidermy shop, where he once loved Alice Morse; "His was not the adoration of a Romantic Youth but the Love of a Man." As noted by an analysis of the film for screen writing purposes in the contemporary Photoplay Plot Encyclopedia, "the central character is made wholly sympathetic throughout the story." Klug is kindly, and overcomes the townspeople's resentment of Germans when war is declared; his family has lived and fought in America for a hundred years. Yet Klug, the German-American, will also become a victim of the beastly Hun of wartime propaganda. Behind the Door simultaneously denounces prejudice while offering a story to fuel the very same hatreds.
Klug becomes captain of a ship on which Alice stows away to be with him, but her gesture becomes disastrous when the ship is sunk by a U-boat. Alone, dying in a small boat, Klug and Alice find themselves apparently rescued by a submarine, but it is in fact the same U-boat. The captain, Lieutenant Brandt, played by Wallace Beery, takes Alice on board but leaves Klug to drown. Alice refuses Brandt's overtures, and he turns her over to his savage crew. Somehow Klug survives, vowing vengeance, and Brandt becomes his prisoner. Brandt boasts of what was done to Alice, and how, when his men were done with her, she was shot out through the torpedo tube (the only portion of her treatment not shown). Klug carries out his oath, to skin his adversary alive, but Brandt dies before the torture can be completed. Klug realizes Alice cannot be brought back, and at the close their spirits are united.
Director Irvin Willat, having rejoined the studio after wartime service, described the production. "I read the script, and I didn't like it—so I wrote a prologue and an epilogue—mainly to lengthen the story—and it's the only picture I ever made what you might call 'off the cuff.' But Gouverneur Morris had so carefully written—so beautifully written the story, that I was able to work directly from the magazine story more or less—and we made the picture. By adding the prologue and epilogue, I didn't have to drag out the story—I could make it as he had written it—short and effective."
Behind the Door is an example of Ince's belief that an unhappy ending is acceptable to the audience if it is the logical conclusion of the story or imparts a lesson. Critics labeled the movie as having an Edgar Allan Poe-like plot, and Photoplay commented, "it took courage to make such a picture as this, for it is a 'he-picture,' no pap for puking infants." Behind the Door cost $84,660 to produce, and grossed $289,039.
Released at the end of 1919, Behind the Door looked back at the Great War from the perspective of several years in the future, 1925, in depicting atrocities. Captain Oscar Klug (Bosworth) returns home to his Maine town, "alone, forlorn and forgotten." There he finds the dilapidated remnants of his taxidermy shop, where he once loved Alice Morse; "His was not the adoration of a Romantic Youth but the Love of a Man." As noted by an analysis of the film for screen writing purposes in the contemporary Photoplay Plot Encyclopedia, "the central character is made wholly sympathetic throughout the story." Klug is kindly, and overcomes the townspeople's resentment of Germans when war is declared; his family has lived and fought in America for a hundred years. Yet Klug, the German-American, will also become a victim of the beastly Hun of wartime propaganda. Behind the Door simultaneously denounces prejudice while offering a story to fuel the very same hatreds.
Klug becomes captain of a ship on which Alice stows away to be with him, but her gesture becomes disastrous when the ship is sunk by a U-boat. Alone, dying in a small boat, Klug and Alice find themselves apparently rescued by a submarine, but it is in fact the same U-boat. The captain, Lieutenant Brandt, played by Wallace Beery, takes Alice on board but leaves Klug to drown. Alice refuses Brandt's overtures, and he turns her over to his savage crew. Somehow Klug survives, vowing vengeance, and Brandt becomes his prisoner. Brandt boasts of what was done to Alice, and how, when his men were done with her, she was shot out through the torpedo tube (the only portion of her treatment not shown). Klug carries out his oath, to skin his adversary alive, but Brandt dies before the torture can be completed. Klug realizes Alice cannot be brought back, and at the close their spirits are united.
Director Irvin Willat, having rejoined the studio after wartime service, described the production. "I read the script, and I didn't like it—so I wrote a prologue and an epilogue—mainly to lengthen the story—and it's the only picture I ever made what you might call 'off the cuff.' But Gouverneur Morris had so carefully written—so beautifully written the story, that I was able to work directly from the magazine story more or less—and we made the picture. By adding the prologue and epilogue, I didn't have to drag out the story—I could make it as he had written it—short and effective."
Behind the Door is an example of Ince's belief that an unhappy ending is acceptable to the audience if it is the logical conclusion of the story or imparts a lesson. Critics labeled the movie as having an Edgar Allan Poe-like plot, and Photoplay commented, "it took courage to make such a picture as this, for it is a 'he-picture,' no pap for puking infants." Behind the Door cost $84,660 to produce, and grossed $289,039.