Ministry of Fear (1944)

Film: Ministry of Fear (1944)

Stars: Ray Milland, Marjorie Reynolds, Carl Esmond, Hillary Brooke, Dan Duryea

Director: Fritz Lang

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

While film noir has its roots as early as the mid-1930's, the 1940's were really when the genre took off, and frequently 1944 is considered to be the first year it crossed over from B-Movies (though, to be fair, a film like The Maltese Falcon is about as storied as they come) into proper classics.  Pictures like Laura, Double Indemnity, Murder My Sweet, and The Woman in the Window all came out that year, the latter being directed by Fritz Lang, who more than any other director of the era became synonymous with the film noir genre, and I couldn't do a season of this series without one of his movies.  This year, I selected Ministry of Fear, which was also in 1944, and is one of the bigger classics of the genre I haven't seen (it even has a Criterion Collection!).

(Spoilers Ahead) Film noir always has a lot of plot and twists to go with it, but even by the standards of the genre this one is a bit convoluted, so hang on.  Stephen Neale (Milland) has recently been released from an asylum after murdering his wife (it was a mercy killing as she was ill, as Milland is our hero & it's 1944).  He visits a village carnival of sorts, and is told by a palm reader that he should bet on the "weigh the cake" contest outside, and he correctly guesses the weight.  However, it becomes clear that he's not the man the palm reader was looking for when another blonde man (Duryea) comes and tries to win the cake back.  After eating the cake on a train, he's accosted by a blind man (who is instead looking through the cake, and when he awakens, the cake is missing).  This sets him on a track where he meets another medium, as well as a brother-and-sister who may or may not all be part of a Nazi syndicate.

The movie is based on a novel by Graham Greene (of the same name), and it's relatively dark for a film noir of this era (you'd get to far bleaker film noir in the late-1940's and early 1950's with things like Nightmare Alley and The Big Heat)...or at least as dark as a movie where a dessert serves as a key plot point.  The camera shots are intriguing, and Milland's backstory is intense for someone playing the hapless loser who stumbles upon a fascist syndicate (weirdly not the only movie that does something with this trope...it was kind of the "body swapping" genre of the 1940's).

It works though.  The plot is too tailored for the 87 minutes (the novel has a lot more intensity, including that Milland's Stephen killed his wife for less generous reasons, and Marjorie Reynolds' love interest is also a Nazi, which honestly would've helped as her character is a bit too peaches-and-cream for my taste).  But overall, this is well-constructed, with decent camera work and a fun performance from Hillary Brooke as a second medium trying to seduce Milland.  The biggest complaint-Dan Duryea, who is one of my favorite character actors of Classical Hollywood, gets virtually nothing to do as one of the hoods involved with the Nazis.

1940's: The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler