Ministry of Fear

Ray Milland falls down the metaphorical rabbit hole in Fritz Lang’s peculiarly entertaining Ministry of Fear, a winding tale of mystery and intrigue spanning insane asylums, bookshops, tailor shops, explosions, seances, cake, and Nazi spies, among many other treats. Adapted from a novel by English author Graham Greene, the film is a maze of quirky characters and fake personas against a backdrop of World War II bombings. When Stephen Neale (Milland) is released from the mental asylum where he’s been living since his wife’s death, his first stop is a local fair where he wins a cake that was meant to be won by a mysterious man who arrives angrily just as Neale is leaving. On the train to London, the cake is stolen by a man pretending to be blind, who knocks Neale out and leaves him for dead. When Neale goes to file a complaint with Mothers of Free Nations, the charity that hosted the fair, the brother and sister who run the organization introduce him to a network of shady figures who travel in a world of secrets. More than in his many other films, Lang here seems to make extensive use of insert shots to create Hitchcockian suspense, while art direction and set design — from the asylum gate to the field of bombs to the Bellane mansion — bring an often dreamy, magical quality to the proceedings.