Excellent film noir thriller directed by Fritz Lang. Probably the closest Lang got to doing a Hitchcock movie. Ray Milland, in one of his best roles, plays a man just released from an asylum after two years. He wanders into a charity bazaar where a fortune teller and a cake (yes, a cake) put him smack dab in the middle of a plot involving a Nazi spy ring. It's a gripping movie stylishly directed by Lang with a good script and interesting characters. Some touches of brilliance throughout, such as the scene on the train with the blind man and the aftermath.As I said before, Ray Milland has one of his best roles here as a man trying to unravel the mystery and remain sane while dealing with the insane situation he's thrust into. Lovely Marjorie Reynolds plays the female lead and has terrific chemistry with Milland. The rest of the cast includes Alan Napier, Dan Duryea, Hillary Brooke, Carl Esmond, and Erskine Sanford. It's really a good cast overall. Some spectacular movies came out during the WW2 years and, in my opinion, the really great espionage thrillers like this have stood the test of time the best.

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.

The experience of watching the 'Ministry of Fear' is unique, since I have never come across such a cinema with such a minimalistic characterization. For each of the characters, we only know what is necessary for the sake of the plot; no additional information, about the characters, is provided. Take for instance the chief protagonist. We only know that he was sent to an asylum, for perpetrating mercy killing on his wife. In case of the lead female protagonist, we only know that she is the sister of the gentleman who runs a charitable society. The bookshop owner is shown to solely sell books, and no other detail is provided for the character. Such minimalistic characterization helped Lang to create a precise and extremely focused narration, without ever losing the intensity of the script. The lean script delineates the mystery and its subsequent revelation, without, ever, straying away from the core of the story. 'Ministry of Fear' reminds us of the power of the script in cinema, where, by simply narrating a crisp story, the director grips his audience's complete attention.

"Ministry Of Fear" is set in England during World War 11 and is an exciting spy thriller with a complicated plot, plenty of suspense and action that unfolds at a lively pace. It was adapted for the screen by Seton I Miller from a Grahame Greene novel and was also directed impressively by Fritz Lang.Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) isn't a typical "spy thriller hero" as he's simply a man who was unjustly incarcerated in a mental asylum for a couple of years following the death of his terminally ill wife. He was believed to have assisted her in committing suicide but in reality, she had taken her own life. When he gets released from the asylum, fate continues to be unkind to him as he gets mistaken for a Nazi spy, has his life put in danger on two occasions and also gets accused of another murder which he also didn't commit!! When Neale leaves the asylum and buys a ticket for London, he has some time to spare before his train is due to depart and so visits a charity fête which is being held close to the station. After winning a cake in a "guess the weight" competition, he's joined on the train by a man who appears to be blind and when their journey is interrupted by an air raid, Neale's travelling companion attacks him and makes off with the cake. Neale then chases him over some moorland and is surprised when the man starts shooting at him. The shooting only stops after the man is killed when the building in which he hides is bombed.Neale later decides to hire a private detective called George Rennit (Erskine Sanford) to investigate the charity (The Mothers Of Free Nations) which had organised the fête and this in turn leads to him meeting Willi Hilfe (Carl Esmond) and his sister Carla (Marjorie Reynolds) who run the organisation. They are Austrians and both subsequently help him after he attends a séance where a man called Cost (Dan Duryea) is shot dead and Neale is accused of his murder.Neale and Carla fall in love and she helps him to investigate whether "The Mothers Of Free Nations" has in fact been infiltrated and used as a cover for a group of Nazi spies. The couple escape an attempt on their lives after a suitcase that they'd been asked to deliver explodes and Neale eventually discovers that the cake he'd won had contained some microfilm which was intended for delivery to the spy ring. A number of further surprising developments follow before Neale's investigations are successfully completed."Ministry Of Fear" contains a number of film noir motifs such as clocks, mirrors and expressionist photography but another significant one is the uncertain and changing identities of some of its characters. There are two women (a fortune teller and a medium at a séance) who both claim to be Mrs Bellane and Dan Duryea's character operates under two different names (Cost & Travers) as does Carl Esmond's (Hilfe & Macklin).It's not only the identities of people that can't be trusted in this movie as a number of the characters are also not what they appear to be and the fortune teller and the medium are both fakes. Deception on this kind of scale creates a sinister atmosphere within which it becomes impossible to trust anyone and Neale even has reason to doubt where Carla's loyalties lie. In a situation where deceit is everywhere and no-one can be trusted, Neale's paranoia understandably grows and is soon accompanied by feelings of alienation as he also can't get the police to believe him because his previous conviction and the time he spent in the asylum undermine the credibility of everything he says."Ministry Of Fear" really is very entertaining on a number of levels and Ray Milland is particularly good as an ordinary man who has to cope with all the danger, desperation and confusion that he experiences during this high speed adventure.