1944 Directed by Fritz Lang
Stephen Neale is released into WWII England after two years in an asylum, but it doesn't seem so sane outside either. On his way back to London to rejoin civilization, he stumbles across a murderous spy ring and doesn't quite know to whom to turn.
El ministerio del miedo, Ministerium der Angst, Αγάπη στη Σκιά του Φόβου, El Ministerio del Miedo, Erään merkin varjossa, Espions sur la Tamise, Il prigioniero del terrore, 공포의 내각, Quando Desceram as Trevas, Prisioneiros do Terror, Министерство страха, 恐怖内阁
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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.
Fritz Lang's wartime thriller focuses on Stephen Neale upon his release from a two year stay in a mental asylum. Through chance, he is caught up in an odyssey involving a possible Nazi spy ring. Ministry of Fear really makes good use of its freewheeling plot in the first half of the film - it's far from typical stuff as we see fortune telling, a fight over a cake and a seance, among other set pieces. Broadly the film is somewhat generic, but Lang constantly lifts it with a psychological angle, which comes to fruition in the form of paranoia, brought on by constant fear and misdirection. The set design and lighting in particular are superb and there's numerous clever…
SOME MILD SPOILERS
After being released from an institution, a mix-up results in Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) stumbling onto a sinister spy ring in the middle of the Blitz, which leaves him unsure of just who to trust, in Fritz Lang’s wartime noir thriller based on Graham Greene’s novel and with Marjorie Reynolds and Carl Esmond.
It’s here Lang gradually moved into the kinds of hardboiled noir tales that his time in Hollywood would become best known for; in that way, the film serves as a transitional project for the legendary expatriate filmmaker’s different sensibilities, being half Boy’s Own-eque wartime thriller while also trying to be more of…
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.
Shrouded in darkness, even when enshrined in all new light. Flooded with new revelations and still, all I can see is clouds, clouds, clouds. Have I just been cooped up for too long, or is everything really this much foggier on the outside. On second thoughts, could I have been blind to the real source of the shadows all along… You’ll not find a flashlight here.
Wartime anxieties wear an all-new shade of black-and-white in Fritz Lang’s world of comically large scissors and the most afraid you’ve ever been of a slice of cake. I can’t remember the last time I’ve gotten so paranoid over a piece of pastry, and yet here we are.
My internal flame was kept burning…
I absolutely adored the first 15 minutes of this, with Ray Milland so happy to be among humans again that he responds to every interaction with charm and a smile, assuming normalcy despite the silence of the crowd around him, and the way they move in unison. Only when the blind man carefully crumbles his cake does Ray realize that, perhaps, all of this might not be so normal after all. So good!
The rest of the movie was really let down by those 15 minutes, because they set the pace so high, and the tone is so perfect -- there's no way what follows could possibly maintain their level. And it doesn't, but it's still pleasurable: heavy on atmosphere and Milland being pleasingly bland in the midst of a WWII London crawling with Nazi spies, complete with a handful of twists thrown in for good measure.
Thanks for the rec, @Daniel!
In look and movement this is the closest Lang's ex-pat movies came to looking like his German work, though here his mastery of the baffling, almost supernatural thriller is bent as much toward Kafkaesque comedy as paranoid tension. The cake is a lie.
“You’re most attractive when you’re lying.”
Ministry of Fear is a mostly nifty spy noir that I keep hoping would be a little better.
There’s nothing quite like being released after two years in an insane asylum, sentenced to a term there for dubious reasons, and stumbling into a nest of vipers just because a fellow wants a piece of cake. By the way, when spies want to give microfilm to other spies, why does it have to be hidden in something if it isn’t going to be transported? Wouldn’t just handing it off be much simpler?
Anyway, Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) is caught up in one of those wrong-man plots we all love so much, and soon a bunch…
The passage from Greene to Lang is to some extent a movement from subjective to objective, as Greene's story deals with processing Nazi evil while Lang is about a world out of order. One might also argue that they point to the differences of literature and movies as wartime tools. It is probably the Lang movie that comes closer to Hitchcock because Greene comes very much from the same British spy literature tradition Hitchcock draw heavily early on his career. The fair in particular feels like a big Hitchcockian joke, but the nastiness it is delivered is very specific to Lang. I find the four wartime Lang thriller very powerful and while this isn't quite as good as Hangmen Also Die, the Europe it presents does stay with you.
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).
