MovieChat Forums > Secret Beyond the Door... (1948) Discussion > Boobeard + the Heroine

Boobeard + the Heroine

posted 18 years ago by zygimantas
3 replies | jump to latest

Okay yeah... well the Bluebeard stuff is in the public domain, I mean that metaphorically, but it was unforgivable for Lang to rip off Patricia Highsmith's story "the Heroine" just to include it as a laughable subplot of the movie that wasn't even properly developed.

just so everyone knows (and I will include spoilers), "the Heroine" was a short story about a congenitally deranged young woman who takes a job as a nanny for a family, and (I'm simplifying it, it's a really well developed psychosis) becomes worried she might lose her job, so she sets the house on fire in order to "save" the children from fiery death and secure the everlasting gratitude of the family.

Great story, terribly poorly rendered here - and it's no coincidence, Highsmith won the O. Henry award for the story only two years before this film came out, so it's not as if it was obscure.

BOOOOOOOO !!!

[–] waldenpond88 8 years ago

I just read all the threads in the message board wondering why nobody (with the exception of zygimantas) realized that this is first and foremost a variation on Bluebeard (more than "Rebecca").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebeard

[–] waldenpond88 8 years ago

I'm a big Highsmith fan since the early 1980's (read every single novel until "Edith's Diary", then I didn't find her books as compelling as in her Ripley days), but never heard about a novel called "The Heroine". It must be one of her short stories I assume?

[–] greenbudgie (2355) 5 years ago

I notice 'The Heroine' was published in Harper's Bazaar' magazine in 1945. So it would definitely be a short story. I don't know if it can be tracked down in any anthology. I would like to read it to see what similarities it has to this movie. Highsmith doesn't seemed to have got any writing credit for this film.