Why do we go for certain Region B Blu-ray imports, even when we already own domestic disc releases? The big deal for most collectors are the extras. Criterion’s added value items are light compared to the extras obtained and produced for this UK release of Fritz Lang’s wartime spy chase thriller — Indicator includes an irreplaceable audio recording of Lang speaking at a screening Q&A session, in 1962.
Fritz Lang is one of the Andrew Sarris pantheon directors whose filmography fits neatly within the construct of the 1960s Auteur Theory. But I feel that he’s more interesting as an inventor and innovator of 20th- century thriller genres. As has been harped on in this column many times before, Fritz Lang appears to have invented the modern spy film genre, adapting most of its distinguishing features from the thrillers of pulp fiction and the movies. His first films in Hollywood were fierce examinations of American crime and the nature of justice, as seen in the anti-lynching drama Fury, the Bonnie & Clyde tragedy You Only Live Once and even the ‘crime is not profitable’ light comedy-cum-musical You and Me. But after a couple of westerns at Fox the war came, and Lang applied his skills to high-tension espionage fantasies emphasizing the new word struggle. Man Hunt is a London-set spy vs. spy saga about an English sportsman who trains his high-powered rifle on Adolf Hitler. The leftist Hangmen Also Die! confects a fictional thriller around the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, detailing a Czech communist cell that bands together to resist the Nazi crackdown that follows.
Invited to a new studio, Fritz Lang’s next would be an adaptation of Graham Greene’s just-published novel Ministry of Fear. It takes place in a setting similar to Man Hunt, but the tone has changed entirely. Instead of a fearless adventurer, the hero is a neurotic nursing a guilt complex and ensnared in a shadowy conspiracy. It would seem to be perfect Lang film material.
Newly released from an asylum, Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) wins a prize cake at an English country fair, only to find that the fair’s staff intended it to be won by a mysterious Mr. Cost (Dan Duryea). When his train is stopped by an air raid, a blind man steals the cake, but is blown up in the Nazi bombardment. Motivated to make sense of the mystery, Neale contacts the war relief charity that sponsored the country fair and meets its charming organizers, Austrian refugees Willi and Carla Hilfe (Carl Esmond & Marjorie Reynolds). Stephen and Willi attend a séance given by Mrs. Bellane (Hillary Brooke of Invaders from Mars). More than one person from the fun-fair attends, along with noted anti-Nazi author J.M. Forrester (Alan Napier). The mysterious Mr. Cost shows up at the last minute, and when the room goes dark a murder takes place. Suspected as the killer, Stephen goes on the run pursued by a strange man with a nail file (Percy Waram). An eccentric private detective he had hired, George Rennit (Erskine Sanford) ends up in a situation that only compounds Neale’s status as a wanted man. With both Scotland Yard and what seems to be a nest of spies on his tail, Stephen can only turn to the sympathetic Carla And Willi. But are they part of the conspiracy as well?
Ministry of Fear is Fritz Lang’s second and last film for Paramount. Lotte Eisner’s biography tells us that Lang’s customary contract demand for revision rights was accidentally omitted from this particular deal, so he was forced by writer / associate producer Seton I. Miller not to stray from the script. That explanation almost sounds fishy, as almost every detail in the film follows Fritz Lang’s recipe for a spy show in the classic Dr. Mabuse tradition. The main change is that the emphasis is on the luckless victim instead of an evil mastermind.
Even the title sounds like a Langian motto for paranoia, like the phrase ‘Empire of Crime’ from his political pulp prophecy The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. This show has striking similarities with Lang’s later, brilliant swan song feature The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, including a murder at a clairvoyant’s séance and more than one character with a double identity. But the basic premise is the very Hitchcockian situation of a helpless hero caught in an invisible conspiracy, watching his options close as an unseen group of villains kills his friends and frames him for the crimes. Author Graham Greene was reportedly not happy with the movie, which downplayed the Neale character’s neuroses. In the book Neale suffers a real nervous breakdown. He himself fears that he’s just going crazy, that the web of spies may be a paranoid delusion.
Some details play like imitations of very original ideas from earlier Lang pictures. The fake cake-guessing scheme seems a highly unlikely method of passing messages between spies. The fake blind man reminds us of the balloon vendor in Lang’s masterpiece ‘M’, but minus the audiovisual poetry. A blind man hit by a Nazi bomb sounds more like a cruel joke in a surreal Buñuel drama.
The film of Ministry of Fear is less chaotic. Its hero is perplexed but remains reasonably composed. The script imposes a battery of superficial visuals to stress the character’s anxiety, but without much effect — ticking clocks, an emphasis on strange objects like that mystery cake. The wartime rationing of eggs makes the cake quite a prize, even without its holding the MacGuffin-like secret the spies wish to ferret to Germany. The film’s best depiction of psychological distress is a key image where Neale waits in a tailor’s shop for what might be a murderous conspirator. Sitting in a medium shot, Neale observes the room around him. We only see what’s reflected in a large mirror behind him, and we can’t tell exactly what he’s looking at — does he see what we see, or is a man sneaking up on him? The image suggests a psychic detachment from his environment, an anxious, helpless isolation.
Lang’s most interesting visual effect is an almost-too clever final gag involving a bullet hole in a door. It’s the kind of trick that to be most effective would require theater managers to fade the house lights on cue, as was reportedly done for Terence Young’s Wait Until Dark, much later. Lang’s sketch to show his crew how the gag works was published in Lotte Eisner’s biography. The shot really works on a reasonably large theater screen: all is darkness except for this sudden round point of light. The student audience long ago at UCLA applauded the fancy trick shot, but at home the graphic simplicity may be lost because the ‘action’ is so tiny on the screen. Viewers sometimes don’t even see it happen.
Ray Milland’s relatively relaxed hero is somewhat atypical of Fritz Lang. Stephen Neale isn’t as casual about danger as James Bond, but even as a desperate fugitive he has plenty of time to function socially and grow fond of the blonde Carla. He trades jokes with the jovial Willy, and matches wits with the seductive mystery woman Mrs. Bellane. About halfway through the show we find out why Neale had been sent to the asylum. The unhappy, sordid truth makes sense, but it seems out of keeping with the polished Paramount world around Stephen Neale. It looks as if his ordeal is meant to have a therapeutic effect, but he really doesn’t look or act like he needs to be cured.
So what we have is a set of beautifully conceived and directed espionage situations that don’t quite fully reach Langian heights of drama or tension. Ministry of Fear is great fun the first time through, especially for Fritz Lang fans that can appreciate his style. Others may find it a bit tame.
Ray Milland is his usual utterly charming and likeable self. The sweet Marjorie Reynolds eventually fills a Kriemhild-like ‘blood revenge’ function, but one that totally lacks the violent edge given other Lang heroines. Carl Esmond is too obviously chosen as a nice guy Austrian, a dodge that in 1944 surely fooled nobody. Hillary Brooke makes for some sensational visuals, but her contribution is limited to a few sultry Mata Hari gestures. Also underused yet wholly effective is the great Dan Duryea, who instills maximum menace into his couple minutes’ worth of screen time. Duryea injects tension at one point just by toying with a large pair of tailor’s scissors, disturbingly close to Stephen Neale’s stomach. Fritz Lang must have been impressed with the actor, for he claimed plum parts in Lang’s next two movies, The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street.
