Who payed the critics

Perfectly adorable

disgusting, overrated, pointless

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

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.

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.

I know that among many film buffs of vintage Crime/Thrillers from Hollywood's heyday, director Fritz Lang ranks right up there in the Top 10 of "Best Ever". And, hey, that "OK" by me.But strictly speaking from a personal point of view (and this is after seeing 6 of what are considered to be Lang's best works from the 40s & 50s), I view him as a decidedly over-rated film-maker.In his position as a movie-maker (as is clearly evident here with Ministry Of Fear), Lang obviously took himself way too seriously and this, in turn, caused him to repeatedly over-play the drama (to the point of almost-parody) of any given story.When it came to the genre of Film Noir, Fritz Lang was a director whose completed films didn't offer me, as a viewer, much satisfaction.I mean, even novelist Graham Greene (whose book this film's story was based upon) came out (some years after this film's release) and publicly stated that he was less than pleased with Lang's treatment of his story. And, I, for one, couldn't be in more agreement with Greene on that one (especially since he was talking about his own book).Set during the "Blitz" in war-torn England, Ministry Of Fear's somewhat lacklustre and anti-climatic story deals with elements of paranoia, as well as espionage where, in the realm of things, everybody is a potential suspect (and Lang, pretty much milks this aspect of the story to its very last drop).Filmed in a grubby-looking b&w, Ministry Of Fear had a running time of 90 minutes.

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.