Ministry of Fear (1944)

Lang Battles Nazism

Fritz Lang was one of the greatest directing talents to ever emerge from German cinema. Born in Vienna, he migrated to Berlin following service in World War One and became one of Germany's premier directors.

When Hitler came to power, however, Lang found himself at a potentially deadly crossroad. He was summoned by Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's infamous Director of Propaganda, and was offered the position of becoming the regime's head of filmmaking.

The sagacious director knew a trap when he saw it. He was aware that the Nazi regime was aware of his opposition to everything it stood for as well as one other important fact. While Lang was a practicing Catholic, his mother was Jewish, a fact of which Goebbels and Hitler were surely aware.

Lang believed that his life was at stake. He left quickly by train that evening and proceeded to Paris, leaving behind his wife and family. From there he moved to London, at which point famous producer David O. Selznick of "Gone with the Wind" fame came to his rescue by putting him under contract and bringing Lang to Hollywood.

It was with understandable relish that Lang, after reading famous British author Graham Greene's suspense novel, desired to bring "Ministry of Fear" to the screen. The 1944 release centers on the story of a victim of fate, played by Ray Milland, becoming caught up in Nazi espionage intrigue in war torn London.

In fact, the touching scene where Milland and Marjorie Reynolds realize that they are falling in love occurs during a blackout when they, along with other Londoners, seek refuge at an Underground Station.

The story begins when Milland, who the following year would win a Best Actor Oscar for "The Lost Weekend," which was directed by another famous war time émigré from German directing ranks, Billy Wilder, is released from an asylum. He has some time until catching the train for London and decides to spend it at a nearby charity bazaar.

The spy story technique of victim by mistake is employed when Milland assumes the role intended for someone else. He is steered to a fortuneteller, who provides him with the winning weight of a cake being auctioned off in a situation that involves what lies beneath crust and battered eggs. The "real eggs" factor is stressed, an important war time element during a period of shortages.

After Milland leaves the bazaar and steps aboard the train bound for London he realizes he is a marked man. He wonders why and, after a close call, decides to pursue the case when he arrives in London.

In London Milland is thrown into a labyrinthine spy network in which, as customary, it is difficult to distinguish loyalists from Nazi spies. He makes a correct judgment call in trusting and ultimately falling in love with good blonde Marjorie Reynolds, who runs a refugee organization along with her brother, over bad blonde Hillary Brooke, a phony psychic with a penchant for conducting interesting but potentially deadly séances.

The film contains a surprise twist at the end as viewers attempt to figure out the identity of an ultimate insider directing spy activity.

Two excellent character performers surface in villainous roles. They are Dan Duryea, who starred in the successful Lang film noir epics "The Woman in the Window" (1944) and "Scarlet Street" (1945) opposite Joan Bennett and Edward G. Robinson, and Alan Napier, one of Britain's leading stage performers, who was a student at the prestigious London-based Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the same time as John Gielgud and Robert Morley. February 4, 2007

Ding Dong Bell

Maybe Graham Greene didn't like this movie, but he was like every other author and thought his every word was gold. The movie skips all the dreary insane asylum scenes but one, and goes straight to the heart of things, in the county fair, or fete, a concept which people in the USA probably were saying, "What did he say? Fate?" No, it's a fete, and Milland walks in directly after having been let out of the asylym, hearing the music at the train station while buying a ticket out of Ledbridge. He asks the station agent, "Where's the music coming from?" and when told it's the fete, he asks if he could leave his clothes and suitcases on a little bench outside the station while he investigated, had a little unnocent fun after being cooped up for 2 years having killed his poor wife in a Dr. Death sort of provide-me-with-poison-please-darling murder case. In Graham Greene's novel, of course, the hero was headed for a brothel, not a funfair, but the movies of the 1940s had to sanitize things a bit.

Watching this scene, with the ticket agent saying, Oh sure, just leave all your earthly belongings on this bench, nobody will take them, we just gazed in astonishment. Those were different times! They may have had blitz bombings and Nazi spy rings and people pretending to be blind just to make off with your cake, but at least you could leave your bags on a bench and no one would steal them. In general, MINISTRY OF FEAR is an appealing blend of pastoral, not to say candy box innocence, with a moral squalor best conveyed by the decadent beauty of the male leads: Dan Duryea's Dorian Gray smirk, Ray Milland's poetic, nearly Rimbaud charm and effervescence, as though he were waiting for Jean Cocteau to take him out for some opium; and then the German stud suavity of Carl Esmond, who plays Willy, the head of the charity "Mothers of the Free Nations," the brother of the woman Milland comes to love.

Other points of interest include the fabulous apartment of Madame Belaine. Never seen anything like it. A painter herself apparently, she has a fantastic collection of Surrealist art and primitive masks of African peoples. Even her doorbell is a work of art. I can't even describe it, but where most people have a doorbell she got Picasso to paint her door to conceal the bell as the nostril to one of his cubist style multi-eyed profiles of a beautiful woman, I guess herself. When Milland presses the bell I thought the whole of London would blow up. It is extraordinary set design, hallucinatory like the best of Busby Berkeley.

And the low point has to be Marjorie Reynolds' Austrian accent. Weren't there any other actresses working at Paramount who could have at any rate dubbed it in for her? After awhile, though, I gave up hooting at it and indeed developed a fondness for her. She kept slugging at it, as though eventually in twenty years she might get it right. She had courage, and that's really all you need in the movies. May 14, 2006

Not Perfect, but a Good Wartime Mystery

The background story to "Ministry of Fear" is that Director Fritz Lang did not have complete control over production. This shows and becomes more obvious as MF progresses. As MF opens, lead Ray Milland is released from an asylum. He has done time for the mercy killing of his wife. With time to burn before his train leaves, he wanders into a fair and wins a cake. Inside the cake is a secret message intended for German agents in England. The bad guys realize this and want the cake back. The chase is on! RM escapes a hit on the train! Back in London, Milland hires a private dick but the agents kill him and implicate RM. With a murder rap on his record, Milland has to stay on the run and away from the Law. This is the fun part for the viewer! London seems full of spies; how can RM tell friend from foe? Throughout, the relatively unknown supporting cast is excellent. Salvation arrives in the form of Percy Waram, a tough, stiff-necked but fair Scotland Yard inspector. He gives RM elbowroom to clear himself and find the bad guys. This is wartime (!), so MF has the requisite disposition of justice. As recounted above, MF had some production issues: In this reviewer's opinion, it's too brief. At only 86 minutes running time, some scenes and characters are not fully developed. A few fly by. A scene with a sexy Hillary Brooke is teasingly brief. This reviewer solved the problem by frequently hitting the rewind button-and viewing MF TWICE! Since this "solution" will not appeal to all in the amazon community, the advice from this corner is to be adventurous! Those who like fast moving detective/good guy vs. bad guy films should not be disappointed. Since MF moves so rapidly, virtually no one should be bored. Viewers should watch for the mismatched fadeout. MF should have ended with Inspector Prentice (Waram) slowly walking up those stairs, from light into darkness. August 18, 2005

Someone Left the Cake Out in the Train

Stephen Neal has spent 2 years in an asylum for what was judged as a "mercy killing," and when his sentence is completed, he leaves to find a world gone mad. It is 1944, the height of WWII, and it all starts with a cake. Neal wins a cake at a fair, and while on the train to London, is nearly murdered for it. He is then swept into a world of Nazis, spies, bogus fortune-tellers, and sinister people with aliases. We see the plot unfold from Neal's eyes, and are as perplexed as he is; trying to figure out the meaning as one is watching is a hopeless task.

Based on a novel by Graham Greene, the direction by Fritz Lang is excellent, and it has an atmospheric, eerie score by Victor Young. The real beauty of this film is in the superb cinematography by Henry Sharp, with a use of light/shade contrasts that are spectacular, and the composition of each scene a work of art. Added to this is the attractiveness of its leading man. Ray Milland was at the top of his career (he was to win the Best Actor Oscar for "The Lost Weekend" the following year), and is marvelous, as well as very handsome as Neal. Supporting him is Marjorie Reynolds as the Austrian Carla Hilfe, Carl Esmond as her brother Willi, Hillary Brooke as the leggy Mrs. Bellane, and Dan Duryea as a sinister tailor with a big pair of scissors.

This film may not have the most cogent of plots, but it is entertaining, and lovely to look at. Fritz Lang was forced by the studio to tack on an ending that he deplored, and I have to say it is startling in its change of mood. I suspect Lang made it purposely as short and abrupt as it is, as a signal to the audience that it was not his intent. If you like noir spy mysteries, you'll like "Ministry of Fear", but don't waste too many brain cells trying to make sense of it. Total running time is 84 minutes.
August 10, 2005

You Have Nothing To "Fear"

Fritz Lang's "Ministry of Fear" disappointed me. I don't think of it as one of the best noir films I've seen. It lacks there eerie feelings you get when you watch "Double Indemnity", "The Big Sleep" or even Milland's "The Big Clock".

The movie was based on a novel by Graham Greene. He is the man responsible for "The Third Man", "The Quite American" and "This Gun For Hire". All three were made into much better films.

Milland stars a Stephen Neal. A man who has just been released from an asylum after two years after being accussed of killing his wife. Once free who goes to London where he finds himself involved in a plot dealing with Nazis. And he thought the asylum was bad! All of his troubles start when he goes to a fair and has his fortune told. He is told to go and guess the weight of a cake that is being raffled off. After he gets the cake his troubles begin as he is beaten for it.

While the story may sound interesting to some I didn't think Lang was stringing the pieces together in a suspenseful way. Nothing seems to add up. Normally that may cause suspense but in this film's case it didn't. It's not that Lang is not a talented director. I personally think he is. I enjoy his other films such as "M" and "Metropolis". But I never came to really care about what was going in. The movie never involves the audience.

Things start to pick up after the first hour. But by that time it's too late. The movie is only about 90 minutes. Now things start to make some sense and I felt the movie's conclusion came too abruptly. Nothing that happened before lead us to suspect the villian. It just comes out of left field. Though at this point it does carry some suspense.

The movie co-stars Majorie Reynolds as Carla Hilfe, the innocent girl who believes Milland's story. And Carl Esmond is her understanding brother.

Bottom-line: Not a very effective noir film by Fritz Lang. Ray Milland was much better in "The Big Clock". The movie never involves as much and is not very suspenseful. Feels like much of the movie had been left out. April 28, 2005

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