Ministry of Fear (1944)

 

Fritz Lang's 1944 noir "Ministry of Fear" is wonderfully cynical yet weirdly (studio note?) hopeful.  For a Noir.  Melodramatic, sure....please don't tone down that melodrama.  The picture involves a Nazi cabal existing, and hiding, in plain sight during the height of the London blitz.  Ray Milland ("Dial M for Murder") stars as Stephen Neale, a lost soul who, as the picture opens, is counting down the minutes until he's let out of an insane asylum in Lembridge, England, a facility where he was remanded for the past two years for the assisted suicide of his ailing wife.  On his way back to London, Neale stops at the Lembridge Fair where he pays a shilling to guess the weight of a cake.  He's off, thinks nothing of it, stops in the Palmistry tent and is told by Madame Bellane to guess again! Weird but ok.  He does, he wins, and that cake is the MacGuffin that sets this plot in motion.  Is it a MacGuffin?  What's in the cake?  Neale heads for the train to London only to be stopped by some carny telling him someone actually outguessed him, that someone being the Aryan looking fellow back by the tent.   Neale uses some deft sleight of wordplay to hold onto the cake and board the train....followed closely by a blind man.  A Luftwaffe raid later and the blind man is blown up along with the cake.  Neale thinking, what the fuck was all that?

The plot unfolds like many war-centered Noirs, with an unfurling cast of characters, some Nazis, with hidden motives like Carla (Marjorie Reynolds) and her brother Willi (Carl Esmond), two Austrian refugees who at first glance, seem a bit....neat?  Carla falls for Neale, of course, and the feeling appears mutual.  The brother-sister team run the charitable organization (Mothers of Free Nations) that raffled off the cake.  There's Inspector Prentice (Percy Waram) who is more than accommodating considering what must appear as wild claims by Neale.  The picture, released during the war, post-Blitz by just a few years, must have rattled some audiences.  In particular, I'm thinking of the scene where the sirens wail and Neale and Carla, along with hundreds more Londoners, head into The Underground to wait out the bombing that may or may not end their lives, the horrific becoming the routine.   The horrific eliciting declarations of love.

Eventually, this picture makes explicit the MacGuffin while the Nazis slowly begin to reveal themselves, emboldened by desperation and paranoia.  In a world where you can't trust the bookseller or the tailor, who can you possibly trust?   In this world loves come fast, betrayal faster.  Try to keep up.  I'm fascinated by these war-time thrillers which often seem more angry, less contemplative.  Propaganda and art. "Ministry of Fear" checks many of the Noir boxes, obviously the use of shadows (a cornerstone of Lang's German Expressionistic period) being one of those checked boxes.  While melodrama is also a staple of most Noirs, here it seems amped up to ridiculous levels.  Neale's grief stricken over his wife's death and his role in it (he bought the poison, held her as she died).  He and Carla immediately fall in love, talk of engagement.  Carla and Willi are bonded through escape from Nazi ruled Austria as well as their own siblinghood, at times seeing closer than a brother and sister should.   The way this picture ends in tragedy and violence, impending doom...and then.....Prentice, a drive in the country, talk of marriage and a laugh over cake.  Cynicism upended by corniness.  Somehow it works.