Not even kidding, I won a cake just yesterday at a local fair and now I'm freaking the fuck out.

A moody, atmospheric, and a powerfully tense thriller that flows between the realms of paranoia and tangible disillusion. One of Lang's lesser efforts, mainly because of the ways in which it builds uneventfully, but Ministry of Fear is nothing less than riveting.

in which Fritz Lang invented "Cake Noir."

Noirvember #9
Cake noir!
Purely as a matter of personal taste I generally prefer American noir and I'm not usually a fan of anything to do with spies, but I still enjoyed this. Some great lighting, especially during the séance (the intimate lighting and the hushed whispering triggered my ASMR), and I loved all the gunshots flashing in the dark. Milland is on good form too. Nice "slice" of paranoia. (Just a shame it had to finish on that terrible cake gag, a bit like this review).

This Fritz Lang film reminded me some of Hitchcock, then on the analysis bit on the Criterion disc the guy spent considerable time comparing Lang to Hitch. So, I must have been on the right track there.

Ray Milland gets out of an asylum, and just wants to go to London, even though it's being bombed. While waiting for the train he attends a carnival type event sponsored by the "Mothers of Free Nations." He ends up winning a cake and on the train someone attacks him and steals his cake. This, of course, leads him into running for his life from a Nazi spy ring and from the police.

A good show, even though sometimes Milland did things that make you want to shout at the screen.

And so, along with Foreign Correspondent and Night Train to Munich, the “World War 2 thriller by acclaimed European auteur featuring a fantastic first act with a bland follow-up and heavy reliance on MacGuffins” trilogy  is complete

Que macabre el nazi marcando el teléfono de disco con una tijera de sastre.

Fritz Lang was really just having an exceedingly normal one when he got his hands on this one huh

Never hits top-tier Lang status, maybe because the signature guilt of his lead doesn't cohere with the rest of the plot until the final minutes, when we realize that marriages have been built on far less than the mutual killing of close family members. Tension and claustrophobia are primo though, like when Ray Milland and a blind (or is he???) man share a train compartment that seems just a little bit too small, or Dan Duryea brandishing a pair of scissors that seem more than a little bit too big. And Carl Esmond delivers one of the most sinister screen finger-snaps of all time.

More a collection of fun, paranoid setups than a cohesive thriller - the plot is too ridiculous and disjointed for any tension to be maintained - but it's visually flamboyant and campy enough to sustain itself all the way through without overstaying its welcome. At 91 minutes, it would be too long, but at 88 it's a good time.

'El ministerio del miedo' parte de una inverosímil premisa (lo relativo al pastel) y finaliza con una escena impuesta por el productor (que Lang dejá casi como una escena añadida). El guión no me ha parecido gran cosa, pero el estilo visual de Lang evocando al expresionismo sí me cautiva. Lo mejor es su constante aura de misterio y lo entretenida que resulta. Así pues, estando bastante lejos de lo mejor de su filmografía, me ha resultado muy fácil de ver y con atributos que sí he disfrutado. Me parece recomendable para cualquier seguidor del director.

A brilliantly haunting and atmospheric film, marred by a script that runs to quick and the lamest ending ever. Seriously, was that the best they could think of? Seriously? I’m mad.

Beautiful neon cinematography. Part of this felt like an early Hitchcock film with the gentility of British manners being paired with espionage. The strangeness of the underworld the main character dives into, especially with the seance scene, was pretty captivating. But The discoveries of what actually led up to The conflict are not much to be desired, the Macguffin the Nazis are after is pretty obvious, the plot reversal is not very surprising. Lang does a very good job carrying a story and having the viewer compelled to see what happens next. But if you are looking for a WWII espionage film noir, stick with either Hitchcock or Carol Reeds early work.

It was a bit disappointing considering I’ve loved the Fritz Lang movies I’ve seen, but it did have some nice style and ended up being a pretty decent Hitchcockian thriller. It lost a half-star in the last thirty seconds, though.

Solid war time noir that very clearly a certain pair of brothers eventually pay homage to. A perfectly reasonable sized pair of scissors, some helpful birds, and cake box!

I really like cake. And I love Fritz Lang.

Completely lives up to the promise of a Fritz Lang/Ray Milland joint written by the same guy responsible for The Third Man. Shades of Hitch too, which absolutely doesn’t hurt.

Perfeitamente engraçado e... ainda não entendi se era pra ser engraçado ou não. Gosto de pensar que há tanta autoconsciência que ele consegue usar as imagens que queria - perfeitas, sobrenaturais - em uma narrativa de mistério que assume todos os clichês rindo um pouco deles. Talvez isso seja querer projetar informações demais que não necessariamente estão ali. Mas acho mesmo que é um grande disfarce, divertidíssimo (você não acredita no último momento). Faz você querer que o sobrenatural existisse, porque depois dele a realidade é mais... decaída. O humor e o mote romântico são a maquiagem necessária pra atenuar esse decaimento? Não sei. Há um belo e insondável mistério escondido em hollywood, de propósito. Ao fitar o rosto perfeito isoladamente iluminado na sessão espírita, tudo parece sério e eterno. Perfeitamente bonito. Esse contraste não pode ser um resultado do acaso.

Tense and exciting throughout. I thought it was going a different direction than it ended up going, but I had a fun ride. The seance scene was dope as hell.

While I admire the excellent direction from Lang, the story moved too slow for my taste. Perhaps it was compelling for its time, but I had higher hopes for this.