Summary
Janet Newell’s marriage detonates the instant she discovers that Raoul, her velvet-tongued husband, is less prince than parasite, so she flees into a Manhattan twilight that smells of wet asphalt and forged stock certificates. Yet Raoul, ever the puppet-master, dangles before her a gilded lure: a post as paid companion to Richard and Isobel de Giles, Long Island’s most storied philanthropists, whose marble halls echo with Gershwin-worthy soirées and the faint clink of secrets. Janet accepts, convinced that inside the couple’s rosewood safe lies the parchment that will redeem Langstreet—Raoul’s silent partner in disgrace—and perhaps redeem herself. Enter Hugh Maxwell, the de Gileses’ chess-playing nephew, whose kindness tastes like late-summer honey and whose glance promises a life unshackled from subterfuge. Love unfurls like a white flag until Raoul resurfaces, brandishing their still-valid marriage certificate like a scalpel; one word to Hugh and Janet’s newfound Eden implodes. Cornered, she watches helplessly as Ross the butler—whose deferential bow always carried a whiff of brimstone—laces the evening coffee with a soporific veil. The safe yawns open, jewels glitter like miniature galaxies, and escape seems certain until the de Gileses themselves step from the shadows, badges gleaming, revolvers steady. Raoul dies mid-snarl; Janet is suddenly, dazzlingly, catastrophically free.
Synopsis
Janet Newell learns that her husband Raoul is a crook and leaves him. However, when he offers her a position as companion to the wealthy Richard de GIles and his wife, she accepts, believing that they hold a property deed that rightfully belongs to Raoul's friend Langstreet. Janet is established in the de Giles' Long Island estate, where she falls in love with the kind old couple's nephew, Hugh Maxwell. Soon Raoul appears, and although Janet now realizes that she has been a pawn in his plan to rob the de Giles' jewels, she is forced into silence by his threat of revealing her marriage to Hugh. On the appointed evening, Ross, the butler, drugs the de Giles' coffee and joins Raoul, who has opened the safe with ease. As they are about to escape, however, the de Gileses--who are actually detectives assigned to capture Raoul's gang--appear, bearing guns and pronouncing the crooks under arrest. Raoul grabs a gun but is shot and killed. Janet is left a single woman, but only temporarily.
Review Excerpt
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The first time I saw Secret Strings—in a drizzly Bologna archive with a single carbon-arc projector sighing like an old locomotive—I understood why the word “melodrama” once carried the weight of high art. The film is a Fabergé egg cracked open by a safecracker’s hammer: ornate, cruel, glittering with contraband light.
June Mathis and Kate Jordan’s screenplay threads a labyrinth of moral quicksand through Long Island’s gilded corridors. Janet’s predicament is less a plight than a prism: every ..."
