User Reviews

What a team! Graham Greene and Fritz Lang. What an actor! Ray Milland. What a movie! This one will stay with you for awhile. Though Greene did better work, i.e his masterpiece the screenplay for "The Third Man," and Lang did better work, "Metropolis, "M," "Fury." Together they make "Ministry of Fear" sizzle.

Today just about any movie from the 40's and 50's shot in black and white with darkness, rain, or shadows is labeled film noir. I don't really know if "Ministry of Fear" is a film noir as such but I do know it's great film making, somewhat along the lines of Hitchcock's "39 Steps." Ray Milland as Stephen Neale is mistaken for a go between espionage agent, called Cost or Travers depending on the circumstances, played to perfection by Dan Duryea. Neale guesses the weight of a cake as foretold by a fortune teller. Obviously the cake is valuable because immediately upon realizing their mistake the spy ring sets out to frame and kill Neale to retrieve the tasty morsel. Not to be missed is an exciting sequence aboard a train involving an alleged blind man. The rest of the movie filled with suspense, mystery, and intrigue involves Neal teaming with Carla Hilfe (Marjorie Reynolds--later of television's "Life of Riley" fame) and her brother to catch the culprits and discover what it's all about. Gradually Neal comes to suspect even Carla herself though by this time he's fallen madly in love with her. The feeling seems to be mutual. The denouement is a showdown between Neal and the spy ring which is exciting and a logical way to wrap up the movie.

Ray Milland walks off with the show even though the rest of the cast gives him able support. It's easy to see that Ray Milland was well on his way to winning the Oscar the very next year for his standout performance in Billy Wilder's "Lost Weekend." It was just a matter of time before his acting talent would be formally recognized. It's a good thing "Lost Weekend" came around for Milland for he never again played a role that so suited his abilities as an actor, though he still had many years ahead of him to be on the big screen.

The script is a witty one with many good lines. Though Lang's direction is good there are a few boring parts following the frame-up. A few more blind man type scenes would have helped tremendously. Still a very good espionage thriller of the old school with a title that reaches out and grabs you to make you want to see what the "Ministry of Fear" is all about.

Although the script may have been a little uneven (and I have no idea how it relates to the book by Graham Greene), but for a couple of hours on a Saturday morning this was some good noir fun. Hints of Hitchcock lent a creepiness to the atmosphere. Things were also somewhat unpredictable, which is important for any mystery. Nicely done.

With an interesting story and good atmospheric settings, "Ministry of Fear" is a good film noir that most fans of the genre should find worth watching. Ray Milland is very good as a man battling a recent personal tragedy, who must then also try to sort out a series of mysterious and hazardous events in which he has suddenly become involved.

There are a lot of characters, and the story gets a bit complicated at times, making use of the W.W.II setting while introducing some quirky elements which generally come across pretty well. There are also a couple of good surprises, and for most of the way you have to guess along with Milland's character as to what will happen next. As with most such films, you must occasionally suspend disbelief, but that does not really detract from the atmosphere and tension.

If you enjoy film noir and/or thrillers, give this one a try. It's not one of the best of its genre, but it moves quickly and works well, at least as light entertainment.

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.

In Lembridge, during World War II, the inmate Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) has just been released from the Lembridge Asylum after two years of compulsory confinement. While waiting for the train to London, Stephen visits a charity fair promoted by The Mothers of Free Nations and the clairvoyant Mrs. Bellane gives a tip to him and he receives a cake as a gift.

In the train, Stephen shares his cabin with a blind man. Out of the blue, the man steals the cake and run through the field with Stephen chasing him. However, he hides in a house that is bombed by the airplanes and dies.

In London, Stephen investigates The Mothers of Free Nations organization and he meets the siblings Carla Hilfe (Marjorie Reynolds) and Willi Hilfe (Carl Esmond) and Stephen goes with Willi to the house of Mrs. Bellane (Hillary Brooke), who is a different woman from the fair. She invites them to participate of a séance and a man is murdered. Stephen is accused and escapes, and Carla finds a hideout to him. Sooner Stephen finds that he is a pawn in a Nazi spy ring and he does not know who is trustworthy.

"Ministry of Fear" is film-noir of espionage by Fritz Lang with a man getting involved in a spy ring in London during World War II. The plot is only reasonable and the motivation for Stephen Neale to get further and further in his investigation is not clear since he had been advised to avoid problems with the police. Anyway the film is entertaining and for fans of Fritz Lang, it is worthwhile watching it. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Quando Desceram as Trevas" ("When the Darkness Has Fallen Down")

During the war years, there were quite a few propaganda films--particularly ones about Nazi spies. While many of them become pretty difficult to distinguish from the others, this one stands out as a well made and effective film that will hold your interest.

Ray Milland plays a man who had been hospitalized for psychiatric problems. When he stumbles upon a Nazi spy ring, no one believes him despite his best efforts. So, after receiving no help, he is forced to take matters into his own hands for the good of the free world.

The acting and writing are first rate and the film doesn't get mired down in clichés. By the way, Alan Napier ("Alfred the Butler" from BATMAN) plays one of the baddies!

In an excellent suspense, Stephen Neale (as played by Ray Milland) finds himself in one precarious situation after another. His problems are compounded by the fact that he has just been released from an asylum and is warned upon his leaving not to get involved with the police again, for "a second charge would not be easy." Inadvertently, he does and it isn't! Very funny role played by Erskine Sandford as Mr. Rennitt, the detective who indicates the his private investigating is "a respectable business with a tradition. I'm not Sherlock Holmes." Anyone who enjoyed "The Man Who Knew Too Much" will find this film spellbinding. The last few lines of the movie make viewing a good movie even more fun.

Other than loving these kind of stories and this type of film/ambience, my main reason for watching 'Ministry of Fear' was for Fritz Lang. A great and very influential director, with a fascinating style that stands apart from the styles of most directors. 'Metropolis' and 'M' especially are masterpieces, not all of his films are great but even Lang's lesser work is better than the lesser work of most (sorry for the cliche) and when he was at the top of his game he was brilliant.

'Ministry of Fear' doesn't see him at the top of his game and is a little bit of a disappointment, being somebody who was really intrigued by the plotline. The talented cast, with the likes of Ray Milland, Marjorie Renolds and Dan Duryea, have also done better in terms of films and performances. It is though an example of lesser Lang being better than most directors in the same position. While not considering 'Ministry of Fear' a must see, it is worth a one-time watch.

There are a lot of good things. Although the production values are not what one calls lavish, the film is still beautifully filmed and eerily noir-ish in its best points in some almost expressionist visuals and the lighting. The sets, again not high-budget-like but never really cheap, are quite striking to look at and evocative. The music is haunting without being too over the top and Lang's distinctive directing style is very much recognisable still. Enough of the script is taut enough, it may have tried to do too much, but it is still intriguing and doesn't make the viewer feel dumb.

Although the story is problematic, it does compel for enough of the time with a nice suspenseful atmosphere throughout and some bravura moments. Such as the search for the cake, the seance (some classy filming here) and the unmasking. Most of the performances are fine, with Milland a strong presence complete with good intensity and enough to him to root for him. Perry Waram, amusing Erskine Sanford and especially sinister Duryea stand out in the most interesting roles.

However, there is more to the problem than being a poor adaptation of Graham Greene's riveting source material. The story generally is somewhat unimaginative and does suffer from too many characters and too much going on, making 'Ministry of Fear' feel over-complicated towards the final act and like it needed a longer length.

Reynolds to me came over as bland and didn't seem to fit with everything else somehow. Furthermore, the ending is too much of an over-convenient anti-climactic cop-out.

In conclusion, worth a look but all involved have done better. 6/10

Ray Milland is brilliant in this story of a man whose troubles just begin when he is released from an asylum. The suspense is so thick it can be cut with a knife and the supporting cast is excellent in this innocent-man-caught-up-in-espionage classic. The photographic shadings are also just right. And remember, the cake is made with real eggs.

RAY MILLAND is a man just released from an asylum during WWII and we follow his misadventures after he's told to stay out of trouble. He guesses the weight of a cake at a fair and soon thereafter he and the cake become an integral part of the plot, taken from a Graham Greene novel.

Milland gives his usual competent performance as the man who doesn't know whom to believe when he finds himself among some Nazi spies. MARJORIE REYNOLDS is sufficient as his love interest but her role is very peripheral and she makes no lasting impression as the femme lead. DAN DURYEA is at his nastiest and has a few interesting scenes.

Overall, a disappointment since the espionage plot is rather murkily unraveled and by the time the wrap-up comes, some viewers may have already lost track of some of the story's twists and turns.

Summing up: Definitely not one of Fritz Lang's best films, but of passable interest for those who like spy stories.

Based on a novel by Graham Greene and direction by Fritz Lang, no-one could say 'Ministry of Fear' doesn't have a top class pedigree. But the story is not one of Greene's strongest, a shaggy dog tale of a suave hero, glamourous femme fatales and Nazi spies that at its best foreshadows 'The Parallex View', but is also pretty ropey in places. Liekwise, there are also places where the film shows its age: the concluding fight scenes are very weak and static by modern standards. But the pacing is refreshingly brisk, and there's enough going on that I'm surprising it's never been re-made, if not in the pure contemporary style then at least as a neo-noir homage.

Man released from mental hospital gets innocently involved with Nazis because of a cake.

There are more than enough compensations in this flawed thriller to keep viewers' eyes glued to the screen. But what I'd really like to see is the movie Lang wanted to make instead of this one, the version producer-writer Miller and the Production Code insisted upon (IMDB). Not that this version is unworthy, but it's not hard to see Lang's sensibility competing against Miller's turgid screenplay. Unfortunately, the scenes follow in no particular order, while the several genuinely good plot ideas (the many clever snares) lose impact because of murky development. Too bad there wasn't a streamlining re-write. Couple that revision with Lang's visual talents and a first-rate thriller of Hitchcockian proportions would have resulted.

At least producer Miller popped for some impressive sets to accommodate Lang's expressionist vision-- the very last scene may be the only sunshine shot in the entire 90- minutes,(the requisite happy ending). The narrative may be muddled, but several scenes are memorable—the sinister blind man, the frantic search for the cake, the final unmasking. Each shows an expert blend of form with content.

Unfortunately, the movie is also harmed by spotty casting. Milland is okay, but he is a better actor than he shows here, which is perhaps Lang's fault. A serious flaw, however, is Reynolds (Carla) who shows way too much American malt shop to pass as a European, even as the sister of the very European Esmond (Willi). Then too, I'm as big a fan of Duryea as anyone. But one thing he's not by any stretch is a British tailor. For that reason, it's probably just as well his part is surprisingly small. On the other hand, there's the stately Hillary Brooke (Bellane), always an impressive blend of brains and beauty, along with a very smooth and affable Carl Esmond, both of whom deliver in spades.

I wanted to like the movie more than I do. But, it's really a movie of parts rather than a satisfactory whole. With better casting and cogent narrative, the results could have been truly exceptional, instead of the flawed thriller it unfortunately is.

Fritz Lang and Graham Greene were mutual admirers so Lang was initially only too delighted to accept Paramount's offer to film the latter's novel. However, he hated the shambles the studio made of it and as he later recalled, "I saw it recently on television, where it was cut to pieces, and I fell asleep."

Still, bad Lang is usually better than no Lang, it evokes agreeable memories of classic Lang's like the seance in 'Doctor Mabuse', the blind man in 'M' and the exploding room in 'The Testament of Dr. Mabuse'; while it's always good to see Ray Milland, Dan Duryea makes a memorably sneering villain in a wing collar and the backdrop supposedly depicting wartime London is charmingly unreal.

It's interesting to read that both Fritz Lang and the source novel's author Graham Greene were unhappy with this film. It's not Lang's greatest work, but it entertains well enough. It's also the first Hollywood film from Lang that, I feel, really looks like a Lang film from beginning to end. The sets are larger and slightly less realistic with greater depth, the use of shadows more pronounced, and the compositions more exact with a roving camera in certain spots. Surely, these things had appeared in his previous Hollywood films, but never has it felt like Lang was in complete control of the physical production like Ministry of Fear.

Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) is released from a mental institution after two years under a comfortable lock and key, and on his way to London (to be jostled about by as many people as possible to counter his isolation of the previous two years) he decides to take in a small, country fete organized by the Mothers of Free Nations, a charity that does...something. I think they try to get people out of war-torn parts of the world. Anyway, the charity's real purpose isn't important or germane to the plot. What's important is that some mysterious happenings are going on around a cake. Neale sees a psychic who tells him the cake's exact weight, which he uses to claim the cake in the contest for it. He walks away, but before he can get back to the train, another man jumps out of a car, runs to the psychic, and looks on ominously as the women of the fete try to talk Neale into giving up the cake unsuccessfully. He gets attacked by a supposedly blind man in the train which ends in a chase through the countryside and a bombing of a small house where the blind man gets hit and dies (there's some wonderfully subtle black humor about this late in the film).

Neale decides that he's going to get to the bottom of all of this when he gets back to London, but he does the normal thriller thing and refuses to go to the police. If he gets caught up with them, he's convinced, they'll throw him in jail because of the incident that led to his forced internment at the mental asylum. He hires a private detective and goes to the central office of the Mothers of Free Nations, run by Austrian sister and brother Carla (Marjorie Reynolds) and Willi (Carl Esmond). Both are happy and willing to help, and the first stop is for Willi to take Stephen to see the psychic, who actually lives in London, Mrs. Bellane (Hillary Brooke). This is not the same Mrs. Bellane who was in the small town, and the mystery deepens, especially when the lights go out during a séance and the man who Neale saw at the fete ends up dead on the floor from a shot to the head while Neale is holding a loaded gun in his pocket.

Who does Neale trust? Who does he turn to for help? Who is the man hiding outside of the private investigator's office who keeps picking his nails with a pocketknife? Where did the private investigator disappear to? Who is this cabal of people who seem determined to frame him for a crime he didn't commit? How does this all tie to a cake he won at a small country fete?

How this ends up manifesting in the film is through an unending sense of dread and low-level tension. I imagine that it reflects the source novel well in this regard, and considering Greene's well-documented disdain for how Alfred Hitchcock made his British-era films, it ends up feeling like a counter-example to Hitchcock's work. It's in the suspense genre, but it's more character driven and less filled with standout sequences of concentrated tension. Essentially, it's not Man Hunt.

I think that conscious effort to keep away from more Hitchcock-like suspense ends up working against the film in the final third. It plays out a bit too flatly, the big confrontation between Neale and the man behind the curtain being a little wrestling match in a living room instead of something more drawn out, ornately designed, and intensely dramatic. This ending is more realistic, but less interesting than something Hitchcock would have dreamed up.

Who knows? Maybe Lang wanted to make something like that, but his screenwriter and producer were the same person, Seton I. Miller, limited how much Lang could change to fit his fancy. It's interesting that while Lang's hands were tied in changing the script, the film still feels so much like a Lang production from his German period.

Its first two-thirds is an almost dreamlike miasma of guilt (extending from Neale's reason for being in the asylum in the first place) and paranoia. It's quite effective. The final third doesn't retain that dreamlike horror quality and becomes more straightforward. I was reminded of the much later Scorsese film Shutter Island where the dreamlike miasma ended up being exactly that, the rantings of a crazy person. Most films that try to balance their characters between madness and reality fall on the side that the mad person is actually sane and the conspiracy is always real. I think that convention ends up draining a lot of tension out of the genre in general since we always know that the madness isn't really madness. So, these kinds of movies really hang on their ability to create characters that we invest in, and I think Milland succeeds. He's lost, scared, and determined while never losing his cool. He carries the film on his shoulders because so much of it relies on his emotional state.

So, the film works. It's conventional and operates in a fairly tight box, but Milland helps to elevate it and Lang's expert handle of the physical production keeps things interesting visually. I'm going to have to read the book to see why both Greene and Lang felt like it failed, though.

"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

An exciting World War 2 thriller directed by Fritz Lang. Main star Ray Milland has just been released from a sanitarium after serving a two year sentence there for his unwitting complicity in his terminally ill wife's suicide, which actually might have made for a different and interesting movie in itself. Keen to get back amongst the living, he happily stumbles into a village fete to guess the weight of a cake where a case of mistaken identity involves him in a Nazi plot to steal invasion plans of the Allied Forces.

On his subsequent travels, he encounters a villainous blind man on a train, a mysterious group of individuals attending of all things a seance which also ends violently and an emigré brother and sister from Vienna who run a fundraising group called "The Mothers Of The Free World". When an elderly private detective he employs also winds up dead and with an unbelieving police force unwilling to help, it's up to him and the pretty sister to get to the bottom of the plot, uncover the unlikely mastermind (although I guessed their identity early on) and save the day for all concerned.

Entertainingly directed by Lang, the film is a winning mixture of wartime intrigue, thrills and romance. Milland is the handsome lead, who gets more than he bargains for when he wins a cake (!) and Marjorie Reynolds is the pretty, romantic interest with whom he joins forces. Perhaps the film could have played up more the parts of the scheming plotters to better dramatic effect and some of the plot jumps are a bit implausible but on the whole this was another watchable, fast-moving entry in director Lang's underrated, in my opinion, Hollywood credits.

It's wartime England. Stephen Neale is released after two years in Lembridge Asylum. He had killed his wife in a mercy killing. He comes across a charity fair. There's a guess-the-weight-of-the-cake contest and also a mysterious fortune teller. He wins the cake but something strange is going on. A blind man gets on the train with him but he turns not to be blind. He tries to steal the cake but is killed during the bombing raid. Neale hires private eye George Rennit to help him investigate. He tracks down Mothers of Free Nations which ran the charity fair. Austrian refugees Willi and his sister Carla Hilfe run the charity.

I love the start of the movie. The strangeness of the cake and the blind man. The guy had just gotten out of the asylum. The movie settles into a standard spy thriller. The rest isn't quite as interesting but it's workmanlike. It isn't the strange dark weird film that I thought at first. It's tamer and not as interesting.

The United Kingdom has long been the home of the spy thriller. While writers in the US like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler were turning out hard-boiled crime fiction, Britain had people like John Buchan and Grahame Greene writing adventuresome tales of espionage and political intrigue. In cinema too, the best director of spy thrillers was undoubtedly Englishman Alfred Hitchcock, and many of his early British films were in the genre. Ministry of Fear however was an American production, made by Paramount studios, and yet it is set in Britain and is adapted from a Grahame Greene novel.

Despite this complete independence from the famous British thrillers of the 30s (which weren't just Hitchcock's by the way, Michael Powell did a few, as did Anthony Asquith), you can see the similarities in theme and plot. As in The 39 Steps, The Man Who Knew Too Much and so forth, the hero is an ordinary citizen who is drawn into events by chance. He finds himself in a nightmare situation where anyone could be an enemy, and he even finds it impossible to prove his own innocence to the authorities. I stress all this to prove the point that these devices were not invented by Hitchcock, even if he popularised them and associated them with his name – they were established features of the spy novel.

Being a US production, and seemingly one unable to take advantage of the growing crop of Brit actors in Hollywood, the primary roles in Ministry of Fear go to Americans. Ray Milland was just starting to break through into important dramatic roles, and although this is far from as prestigious as the ones he would soon be getting, it does show off his talent for moulding a new persona. He does a passable British accent, in the days before getting these things right was considered important (cf. Errol Flynn pretending to be a yankee), and gives a realistic look of disorientation to the character which fits in nicely with his innocent bystander status. The only other standout from the cast is Dan Duryea who despite only appearing in a handful of scenes makes a grand impact. Duryea didn't really play authentic types, but that wasn't the point. He was the archetypal creepy villain, and his characters don't have to be particularly active because he was great at constantly projecting the idea that he might be about to do something unpleasant. Take that scene at the tailor's shop, where he dials the number with a pair of scissors – that's a typical and very effective bit of Duryea business.

And finally we come to the director, one Fritz Lang. Lang responds fantastically to the material, and emphasises most of all the sense of entrapment in a nightmarish situation. Take the pivotal cake-weigh scene – who but Lang could make a village fete look so eerie? The child's ball bouncing towards Milland as he enters, the absence of bustle or enjoyment, the silence as Duryea arrives, and the absolute, claustrophobic darkness. It's not just gloomy – it has the surrealism of a dream, and really does feel like some symbolic strand of a nightmare. Also characteristic of Lang is the way he uses odd angles and compositions, not so much for expressionistic value but to satisfy his own aesthetic taste, full of diagonals and art deco starkness. It gives us this sense of displacement as familiar settings and objects become geometric patterns. Hollywood didn't have a lot of cash to spare during the war (for a good example of this check out how minimalist Paramount's "big" Technicolor "epic" of the war years, For Whom the Bell Tolls, is), and oddly enough this fact adds to the effect in Ministry of Fear, with stripped down sets, low-level lighting and a lack of extras making conjuring up the atmosphere of a ghost-town.

And this really is what makes Ministry of Fear that little bit different. Whereas the Hitchcock-directed spy thrillers had a kind of playfulness to them, and used that to complement the sense of excitement which the plots necessarily generated from them, Lang's take on the genre really embodies that feeling of real life becoming a nightmare, a tone which Hitch never really went all-out on. As such, Ministry of Fear works on us like a horror movie (and interestingly the theatrical trailer tried to package it as one) thrilling us by immersing us in its chilling world.

Released in 1944, Ministry of Fear would had been both a spy thriller and a propaganda film. It is based on a Graham Greene story.

Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) has been released from an asylum. He became a cause celebre for assisting his wife's suicide when she was terminally ill.

On his way to London, he attends a local fundraising fete for the Mothers of Free Nations charity. A fortune teller gives Neale the precise weight to win a cake at another stall.

Neale wins the cake but he was not the man supposed to win it. The fortune teller made an error. The cake had some instructions inside it.

Neale finds himself in a Nazi conspiracy. The Mothers of the Free Nations is being used as a front for Nazi spies. Only two Austrian refugees who are brother and sister help Neale especially after he has been accused of murder.

Wherever Neale turns he seems to meet strange people and ends up in deeper trouble.

This has all the hallmarks of being a Hitchcock type wartime spy thriller made in Hollywood. Director Fritz Lang is let down by a mundane and muddled script.

The psychology of Neale's state of mind is not always pursued. Is he just deluded or hysterical given his personal history? The Austrian siblings hardly seem to be suspects at all given where they originate from.