Ministry of Fear (1944)

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

In stylistic terms, Fritz Lang's MINISTRY OF FEAR looks like a follow-up to Paramount's THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942), their adaptation of Graham Greene's fast-moving novel that catapulted Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake to stardom. This time the stars are Ray Milland and Marjorie Reynolds, but the visual imagery is much the same; much of the action takes place in the dingy back-streets of Hollywood wartime London, or in darkened rooms where no one can trust anyone else.MINISTRY OF FEAR contains some memorable set pieces - for example, a séance involving Mrs. Bellane (Hillary Brooke) and the sinister-looking Dr. Forrester (Alan Napier), where a single bright light focuses on Stephen Neale's (Milland's) face as he understands how the voice from the dead is actually talking to him. The screen cuts to black, a shot rings out, and Cost (Dan Duryea) lies dead next to the big table where all the séance participants have gathered.The final sequence is equally memorable, as Stephen and Carla Hilfe (Reynolds) take refuge on the roof of a London building, and Stephen has to fire into the dark to try and kill off those people pursuing him. No one - not least the audiences - knows whether he has been successful or not, until a light goes on and Inspector Prentice (Percy Waram) becomes visible.In this environment, no one quite knows who anyone is. Cost reappears later on as a rather incongruous-looking tailor Mr. Travers, while Mrs. Bellane appears to have a double appearing earlier on in the film. Such uncertainties seem characteristic of a wartime where everyone is out for themselves, and London is swarming with double agents.The plot positively zips by, with Milland trying his best to cope with situations fraught with danger. The final sequence is a bit of a cop-out that has little to do with the plot, but apart from this, MINISTRY OF FEAR is well worth a look.

"The Ministry of Fear" is one of Graham Greene's most entertaining "entertainments," but it gets only a mildly engaging adaptation in this screen version directed by Fritz Lang.The film probably called out to be directed by Carol Reed, the best man for bringing Greene to the screen ("The Fallen Idol," "The Third Man"), but one would have thought that Lang would be a worthy runner up given his proved track record for bringing suspenseful and playful noirs to movie audiences. And "Ministry of Fear" isn't a bad movie, it's just somewhat lacklustre. The major elements from the novel are there, but they never cohere into the dazzlingly fun story Greene gives us in the book. The seance, for example, which is one of the most memorable set pieces in any of Greene's works, exists in the film as a device for moving along the plot.Ray Milland is pretty decent in the principal role; he's got that dark and slightly brooding look that you picture when imagining any number of Greene protagonists. And Dan Duryea does duty as, what else, an unctuous villain.Grade: B

Can we say that Fritz Lange was a genius of the noir. You bet! Ray Milland is a man accused of murder, mayhem, and plotting against the government. Just out of a sanatorium for the mercy killing of his wife, he becomes embroiled in a Nazi plot. A piece of cake from a bazaar is the real character of this film. He wins it and the next thing he knows a blind man knocks him out and steals the cake. Running into the darkened night he chases the man when a bomb explodes and everything including the man and the cake disappear into the fog. Now he must find out what is going on and runs into Mothers of the Free Nation headed by a beautiful woman and her brother. One thing after the next, he is desperate to clear himself. Can he, before the clock runs out? Ray Milland is great as the weary man on the run. So good looking, so suave and yet so vulnerable. The film is to me, an earlier version of North By Northwest, where Cary Grant is in the same predicament. Hitchcock would have called the cake, the McGuffin. Dan Duryea is especially sinister as the tailor with giant scissors. You may have to watch the film several times so you don't miss all the twists and turns.

Ministry of Fear is fun. It's lighter and less moody than one would expect from the premise of a man just out of a mental hospital being pursued by sinister forces, or from the knowledge that it was directed by Fritz Lang and based on a novel by Graham Greene. It certainly is not film noir, though Universal marketed the VHS release under that rubric.In both spirit and look, Ministry of Fear resembles the war-aware Sherlock Holmes series that Universal was putting out at the time. If you, like me, have a taste for that bracing brew of riddles, perils, improbabilities, and good manners, you should enjoy this. You can even look forward to seeing some familiar faces from the casts of the Holmes films.One day after watching Ministry of Fear for the first time, I can't remember a single exterior shot that seems to have been taken outdoors. There may be some, but the impression that remains is that the film was shot entirely under shelter, just in case the Nazis brought the Blitz to California. This dim, artificial "interior world" setting works in a casual way to achieve a dream-like quality. However, we never get the deliberately nightmarish artistic effects that made Lang's reputation. Promising scenes in a séance parlor or a fortune-teller's tent are developed only enough for narrative purposes, not for atmospheric ones. The resulting narrative is always engaging, but it never becomes involving. It doesn't systematically draw us into a labyrinth of intrigue like Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent or Norman Foster's Journey into Fear, but entertains us with a string of incidents. It's as if Lang were skipping stones on a pond for our amusement instead of daring us to go in for a midnight swim.That all sounds negative, but it simply means that Ministry of Fear succeeds in its mission: to show us a good time if we're prepared to have one. The tone is set by the casting of Ray Milland in the lead. Milland is a personal favorite among film protagonists, an everyman who enables everyboys to believe (however vainly) that they can grow up to be big, handsome, unmistakably well-bred, and equal to any challenge without selling their boyish, fun-loving souls. Milland had a maturely magisterial look about the eyes even in his youth; and yet even in later years, when he was the archetype of the self-possessed patrician, he seemed to delight in rolling those eyes or smiling with mischievous glee. His kind of everyman is an inverted, self-made kind. He might be, say, a younger son of a baronet: fully equipped with social graces and education, but unencumbered with responsibilities, appearances, or an embarrassing amount of money. We often find him dislocated from the well-ordered world that he was apparently born to, but destined to settle back into it when his high spirits have carried him through some danger. However saturnine he may look in a publicity still, he'll probably take us on a lark when the projector starts whirring. And so he does in Ministry of Fear.The plot? Well, it's about a man just out of a mental hospital being pursued by sinister forces. He also pursues them in return. Along the way, he meets a young woman played by Marjorie Reynolds. When she starts to speak, it may seem for a moment that she's doing an awful British accent, but it turns out to be a tolerable German one. She plays a refugee from Austria who is running a charitable organization with her brother. What becomes of her, the brother, the private detective who serves as the hero's funny sidekick, or villain Dan Duryea (who supplies the awful British accent), must remain shrouded in deepest mystery until you see the film. When you do, please remember that Fritz Lang had to eat like everybody else, and just sit back while he entertains you.