Ministry of Fear (1944)

Ministry of Fear (1944) is an espionage dream Nazi spy thriller starring Ray Milland, presenting an almost surreal succession of events and clues as one man is sucked further into a murderous Nazi spy plot as he inadvertently receives something the enemy agents are after — in a cake which he wins at a bizarre midnight village fete.

The Nazis in Fritz Lang's film noir mid-war favourite Ministry of Fear aren't presented in the typical style of the day.

The Nazis in this film noir classic don't wear swastika armbands and nor do they make fascist speeches about the benefits of the Reich's new order, a sight common enough from other mid-War propaganda.

There were many films made about WWII, during WWII. The movie Nazis that made the most impact at the time were in the style of the pompous evil-doers of films like Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror (1942); or Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943).

But Fritz Lang had been tormenting Nazis on screen for quite a long time before this, and Lang's 1933 film The Testament of Dr Mabuse was the first of his to genuinely get under the skin of the Master Race.

In this second Mabuse film, Mabuse's amazing looking ghost, (a creature rarely bettered in cinema) seems to partially quote some Nazi slogans in a speech which promotes a warped political anarcho-tyranny, as follows:

"Humanity's soul must be shaken to the very depths, frightened by unfathomable and seemingly senseless crime.  Crimes that benefit no one, whose only objective is to' inspire fear and terror, because the only ultimate purpose of crime is to establish the empire of crime—a state of complete insecurity and anarchy, founded upon the tainted ideals of a world doomed to annihilation.  When humanity subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law—then the time will come for the empire of crime."

The Testament of Dr Mabuse is about psychological projections and magic, and features an insane asylum, madness, and a sensational barrage of images, constituting crazier versions of what Lang tried to tame for The Ministry of Fear in 1944.

What Mabuse is really about is Nazis, however.

It's 1933, and Lang presents a society-wide criminal gang, that seems to infiltrate every aspect of German life, from labourers to the police themselves. The gang are controlled by a madman, who uses other people's bodies to issue orders, and works through the newly developed technological mediums to spread the message, which is largely one of fear.

It's a clear allegory for the rising tide of what Fritz Lang saw as a tide of immoral and chaotic violence-based attacks which were intended to destabilise society at every level, including the physical and emotional.

The very terrifying Voice of Terror (1942)

Joseph Goebbels withheld the release of Testament of Dr. Mabuse, stating that the film "showed that an extremely dedicated group of people are perfectly capable of overthrowing any state with violence." Which is also very telling!

But Lang has a definite vision of social evil, and it is always the same: an underground criminal organisation, usually run as a bureaucracy.

Dr Mabuse - the monster warns against tyrannical political crimes and violence being used to overthrow a state.

Goebbels famously summoned Lang to talk about this movie, and it appeared that Hitler had it in mind that Lang would make the ultimate National Socialist film; it also transpired that Lang being half Jewish didn't bother the Nazis either, and Lang reported that Goebbels had said: "We decide who is Aryan."

This was when Fritz Lang led Germany, in fact, he left the very day of that meeting, ultimately beginning a new career in the United States. Lang's 20 American films were often compared unfavorably to his earlier works by critics at the time, but the restrained Expressionism of these movies was in fact integral to what we now know as noir.

Ray Milland about to leave the asylum in Ministry of Fear (1944)

The Ministry of Fear is a later effort then, and the work of an émigré mow completely settled in Hollywood.

The film opens with a shot of a clock, which sets the hero, a polite and contemplative Ray Milland free from the mental hospital in which he resides.

He watches the clock, he grips the chair, he is alone in the empty room, and he is hoping to wake up from a bad dream.

The opening of Ministry of Fear depicts a fascinating set of circumstances. As he leaves the asylum at the stroke of midnight, the former mental patient enters a world that is certainly more surreal and crazy than any he may have previously inhabited as a man of unsound mind. The implication is stunning — this man, who has been committed to an insane asylum, is exiting to a world that is being blitzed by aerial bombardment — a world more insane than he is — and a world more dangerous and mad than the one he left behind.

The asylum is in fact quite and ordered, and has a pleasant hedge around it. The world outside it is noisy and dangerous, and filled with dream characters who have their own insanities, and many of whom are not who they purport to be.

The Blitz hits 'The Grimpen Mire'?

Ray Milland's character is about to enter the dream-world of Fritz Lang. Everything in The Ministry of Fear (1944) partakes of this dream — including the curtains, secret rooms, and secret identities of the participants. 

The sheer joy of The Ministry of Fear (1944) is the hidden and dreamlike nature of anything.

“A film like Saboteur (Hitchcock, 1942) [tears] off the mask of [the villains] and shows that underneath they are really Nazis. In Lang’s work we don’t have that assurance. You tear off the mask, and under it you find another mask, and another one… [Similarly] there’s always the idea in Lang of the ‘secret beyond the door’. But of course when you open the door and find what you think is the truth, you find just another question.”

Joe McElhaney, “Joe McElhaney on MINISTRY OF FEAR,” filmed 2012 at The Criterion Collection, New York City, NY, video: criterionchannel.com/ministry-of-fear/videos/joel-mcelhaney-on-ministry-of-fear

Briefly inspected by a kindly doctor, Milland sets out into the world to make a brand new life for himself. He buys a train ticket to London, but before he even gets on to the station's platform, he’s drawn away into dark dreams, deceit, danger and a world of sex, death and spies.

Drawn by lights, Milland enters something like a hedge maze which transports him to a strange  charity garden fete, which appears to be taking place at night. He finds himself similarly drawn into a fortune-teller’s tent, where his dream journey speeds up.

Find The Nazi — in the dark.

Of all the dream characters in The Ministry of Fear the most powerful is the magical Mrs Bellane, played by Hillary Brooke. She's a goddess figure, a mother nature figure, a magical figure and a self-proclaimed portal to elsewhere. 

The men defer to her every time, and it isn't just the way she dresses. She is the only one who seems to know what's going on, and sweeps from room to room, creating the magical 'find the Nazi in the dark' game.

This dream-like quality adds a psychological stain to the drama, making what feels from time to time like a crime romp, into something more oppressive. It gives it that film noir feel, in the most psychological sense. The weirdness, and the doubt, the darkness and the motifs, all combine. Nothing is real, and everything is strange, even amid the very real perils and hardships of war.

In fact, there seems nothing genuine about the war portrayed in Ministry of Fear.

The absence of what Glenn Kenny calls "standard-issue Menacing Nazis" leads us not to farce but to fairly common Fritz Lang territory, a semi-psychological landscape wherein faked film sets seem appropriate.

The Blitz in London is not even really seen, and the only real expression of it is when Milland's train passes through an already torn industrial landscape into which he pursues a blind man, who is not really blind. There are later scenes in which we visit the London Underground, where real people once sheltered from real bombs, and these are without doubt the realistic touches which give the film its touch of war.

But this movie is really about an escape into nightmares, admirably summed up by Dan Duryea's massive pair of tailor's scissors, with which he dials upon a telephone near the end.

He's a tailor, yes, and everything is well-cut, designed and infused with what could best be described as stylish menace. 

Hillary Brooke in Ministry of Fear (1944)

Dan Duryea in Ministry of Fear (1944)

One of the most charming and strange of espionage film noir productions, the fantasy elements of the midnight fete and the bizarre encounters with the cake and the blind man, make Ministry of Fear a lot of fun.

The suggestion that everything is not as it seems is evident from the first ticking seconds of the film, which are spent watching a clock count down to midnight. Aside from the fact that a mental patient would perhaps be unlikely to be released at midnight, there is a whole world alive at that hour — including a lively and friendly station master — who like any dream character encourages the hero gently on to the next stage — which is a village fete — in full swing at midnight.

The weird ensemble nature of the fete — taking place as we say while German bombers fly overhead on their way to bomb London and a nearby munitions factory — has Ray Milland as the mental patient very much isolated and alone among a body of villagers who seem to act as one.

Stranger yet, the village fete is being used by Nazis as a way of transferring critical information — the fact that it is all taking place at night and the complicity with which all the villagers act — goes so far to suggest that the entire village are Nazi agents — that everyone here is in on the Nazi act.

The result is strange to say the least, but beautiful, and a thoroughly new flavour in many respects, as far as the American cinemagoer may have been concerned.

The film is based partly on a book by Graham Greene. Graham Greene's protagonist, Arthur Rowe (Stephen Neale in the film), is tormented with guilt for his having murdered his wife. In the movie, that is a mercy killing, something of an assisted suicide. In the book, Rowe slips the poison into his wife's milk – "how queer it tastes," she says – and leaves her to die alone. 

Despite the official finding of a mercy killing, he believes "that somewhere there was justice, and justice condemned him." He knows that the deed was not so much to end her suffering, as to end his own. This overwhelming sense of guilt, pervading the novel from beginning to end, is absent from the film.

His love interest, Anna Hilfe (Carla Hilfe in the film), appears in the motion picture to be uninvolved in her brother's spy activities. In the novel, she does not shoot her brother dead, and there is no rooftop shootout with Nazi agents. Her brother Willi Hilfe, armed with a gun with a single bullet, commits suicide, in a railway station lavatory, when he cannot escape. 

Anna (Carla) thereafter must forever fear exposure as a spy, just as Rowe (Neale) fears exposure as a murderer. They go on together, lovers, but hardly the happy and carefree couple portrayed in the film:

"They had to tread carefully for a lifetime, never speak without thinking twice ... They would never know what it was not to be afraid of being found out."

This guilt is at the heart of Graham Greene's novel, which here is transformed into a Nazi hunt caper —with great panache it must be said — making of the escapade a redemptive transformation for Ray Milland's character from weakened and confused male lead, to a hero who gets the girl and saves the day — the very actions which completed most movies of the day — and certainly those which featured Nazis.

Ministry of Fear (1944) at Wikipedia