Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Based on a novel by Graham Greene (1904- 91) who also was the source of "The Quiet American" and "The Third Man") and released in 1944, "Ministry of Fear" is probably the best spy thriller made during the Second World War. It harks back to John Buchan's hugely popular thriller novel The Thirty-Nine Steps, which had been memorably filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, and forward to Hitchcock's "North by Northwest." It looks considerably more noirish than either, which is not surprising in that it was directed by the great German Expressionist turned Hollywood noir director Fritz Lang, Lang's previous film, Hangman Also Die, about resistance to the Nazi conquerors of Prague, also showed a man on the run. There was no question about what he was on the run from (the Gestapo), however.

"Ministry of Fear" is set in unconqured but beleaguered Britain. The movie opens with a ticking clock. When it reaches 6, Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) is released from what appears to be prison. Waiting for a train, he wanders over to a carnival and has his fortune told. The fortune-teller tells him the weight of a cake that is being raffled off to whomever most closely guesses its weight.

It is soon obvious that Stephen was mistaken for someone else and that the cake is not an ordinary cake, precious as a cake was with wartime rationing of its ingredients. It's hard to write much more about the plot, which is an extended chase of someone (Neale), whose fears are not taken seriously, in part because it is a psychiatric prison from which he was released at the start (and was in because of mercy-killing his wife).

There is, of course, an attractive woman, Austrian refugee (Marjorie Reynolds) whom Stephen needs to trust but does not know whether he can trust and suspects is part of the Nazi fifth-column conspiracy that he has inadvertently stumbled upon. With his hair dyed blond, Dan Duryea appears in one of his vicious, smiling villain turns (armed with a large pair of scissors). The complicated plot climaxes and there is an ironic epilogue (that seems more Hitchcockian than Langian).

Aside from the meticulous visual constructions that characterize all Lang movies, there is much that foreshadows the "paranoid" 1970s thrillers, including an anti-Nazi organization that is a Nazi front, and an expert, Dr. Forrester (Alan Napier) trusted by British authorities for having written The Psychoanalysis of Nazism, who is a Nazi operative in Britain. Besides the phony fortuneteller, there a very lively seance and astrology bamboozling trusting Brits.

Although lacking the charm of Robert Donat in "39 Steps" or Cary Grant in "North by Northwest," Milland is a sympathetic quarry and reluctant hero in "Ministry of Fear," perhaps his best performance other than as the alcoholic in Billy Wilder's film "The Lost Weekend." Marjorie Reynolds is not especially impressive as the love interest (the role is similar to the one Eva Marie Saint ran with in "North by Northwest").

Lang had less control over the script than in his other movies, but was a master at making studio sets ominous. I think the movie remains enjoyable.

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Recommended: Yes

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