[Film Review] Ministry of Fear (1944)

Title: Ministry of Fear
Year: 1944
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Film-Noir
Director: Fritz Lang
Screenwriter: Seton I. Miller
based on the novel by Graham Greene
Music: Victor Young
Cinematography: Henry Sharp
Editor: Archie Marshek
Cast:
Ray Milland
Marjorie Reynolds
Carl Esmond
Hillary Brooke
Percy Waram
Dan Duryea
Alan Napier
Erskine Sanford
Eustace Wyatt
Mary Field
Byron Foulger
Rating: 6.4/10

A charity organization becomes a front of Nazi spy ring in England during the Blitz, Fritz Lang’s conspiracy theory-fused film-noir is based on Graham Greene’s novel, a taut if sketchy escapade about an innocent man’s dogged investigation of what is hidden under the plain sight, that said man is Stephen Neal (Milland), who is newly released from an asylum after being interned for assisted murder of his sick wife, here, Seton I. Miller’s script tones down Stephen’s crime, thus significantly attenuates his guilt which pervades in the source novel.

Stephen’s sanity has never been questioned, a new lease on life barely starts when he fetches up in a village fête organized by the Mothers of Free Nations charity, and inexplicably wins a cake due to sheer quirk of fate and far-fetched misapprehension, when the cake is bombarded along with a nameless assailant, Stephen, narrowly survives within an inch of his life, goes to London and starts his own derring-do to get the bottom of the incident, down the road, he meet an Austrian refugee Carla Hilfe (Reynolds), who runs the charity with her brother Willi (Esmond), friend or foe, a catenation of happenstances will determine that, only, circumscribed by a simplified approach to close the story with a happy ending, the suspension fizzles out in a jiffy.

Clear as day that Lang’s Hollywood knockoffs are unable to hold a candle to his Weimar years achievements, still, in MINISTRY OF FEAR, monochromatic allure and seamless mise-en-scène materialize from time to time, notably during a séance presided by a clairvoyant Ms. Bellane (Brooke), a femme fatale archetype, Lang proves he still has his impressionistic conceit in his genes, only the masterstrokes are at a premium in this second-rate output.

referential entries: Lang’s THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (1944, 7.5/10); CLOAK AND DAGGER (1946, 6.5/10).