Ministry of Fear (1944)

I've been on a bit of a Fritz Lang kick (when I'm not kicking Seijun Suzuki, that is). I've seen his paranoid classic, M (1931), and flash-forwarded 22 years to watch his dirty noir opus, The Big Heat (1953). On a recent trip to the Rasputin store in Fresno, I picked up one of Lang's big wartime Hollywood productions, The Ministry of Fear (1944). This film would give me almost a complete sampling of Lang's career, with the exception of his proto-sci-fi masterpiece Metropolis (1927), and his early silent films.

And, since it's Spring Break, I decided to sit down and give it a whirl.

I. What Is It?

This is the story of a man recently released from an insane asylum, embroiled in a Nazi spy-scheme, just trying to return to a sense of normalcy. There are cakes with microfilm hidden in them, cases of books that bear explosives, and a seance mean to mask a secret Nazi spy ring.

II. A Clever Little Thriller

The Man Out of His Depth trope has become a trope over the years because it has been over-used: it often feels tired, nowadays. But I quite like Lang's spin on it. It helps to have a leading man adept at playing a gamut of emotions, and Ray Milland is game as our hero, Stephen Neale. But Neale is no bland do-gooder: he was institutionalized for mercy-killing his ailing wife, and he takes to subterfuge rather easily. Milland imbues him with an edge that makes the character more compelling than an average fish-out-of-water nincompoop.

The story is twisty and fun: it is no doubt due in large part to Graham Greene's novel, which serves as the inspiration for the film. But the script, as I understand it, was heavily repurposed and streamlined by scriptwriter Seton I. Miller. And then Lang filtered it all again, through his own paranoid expressionistic perspective. What results is a spy thriller distilled through a nightmare, with a bit of good old fashioned mania thrown in for good measure. Is this all really happening? Can we trust Neale in the first place? What is real and what isn't? Lang manages to keep these balls spinning in the air with just the right level of uncertainty. Even to the point where Neale feels resigned to his own possible insanity.

At 86 minutes, Lang doesn't waste your time, either. The story starts, and races to the end, rather expediently.

III. Circles and Symbolism

This movie is littered with circles. There's the rounded pendulum of a clock; the crater of an exploded bomb; the linked arms of the patrons of a seance; the light through a bullet hole in a shadow-darkened door; a zodiac poster creating a halo around the head of Neale as he gets his palm read at a local fete. Lang is obsessed with circles, and allows scenes in the movie to rhyme, again and again, bolstering the circle imagery: The opening shot of a man sitting in the dark, while another man enters, throwing light into the room mirrors one of the final shots, where a man attempts to exit a darkened room, throwing light into it. Neale pressgangs four people into his service: a down-on-his-luck private eye, the director of a charitable organization, that man's sister, and a Scotland Yard detective. Neale accidentally says, word for word, the code phrase that kicks off the whole disaster. One character is murdered, only to be revealed to be alive later, and kills himself when backed into a corner.

I could go on.

The film is stuffed to the gills with circles and circular plot machinations, and Lang does well to just let it all be: he doesn't over-explain himself, or offer the audience an abundance of answers: who are the bad guys? What happens to them all? By keeping it all vague, Lang lends the film a dream-like quality, which allows for a bevy of interpretations and readings. There's a lot going on, and Lang just leaves the puzzle pieces scattered around the floor for the viewer to put together how they will. There's value in that, especially because there was almost certainly pressure for him to put the pieces together for his audience.

One other thing I saw, that has stuck with me, is Lang's preoccupation with things that are not what they appear to be: the cake that is more than a cake, the luggage case that holds more than books, the country fete and seance as covers for a Nazi scheme. The people, places and things in this movie all appear to be something, they are not. In this world of paranoia, and spies, it is hard to tell who is who and what is what. I liked that Lang allowed this theme to play out again and again and again. There's even a shot of Neale in a tailor's shop, with the action in the background revealed to be reflected in a mirror: by the time Lang pulls out and swings his camera away, the audience is left momentarily disoriented, mirroring Neale's mental state as he discovers who the tailor actually is. It is a deft little trick, and it was a lot of fun.

IV. A Little Too Hollywood

I've seen Lang at his most paranoid, and I've seen him exploring the darkness of the human soul. It is strange, then, to see such a sanitized film. There's a classic love interest, which I thought was going to explode into a Nazi twist at moment. But it didn't. There's also a smash-cut to the happy couple speeding away literally into the sunset, happily ever after. Lang was from Austria, and cut his cinematic teeth in Germany, so I can understand that, arriving in America in the middle of World War II, he had something to prove. As I understand it, he went to great lengths to denounce nazism. And there's nothing wrong with denouncing nazism: you know, fuck nazis. But. This film does feel like Lang was compromising in order to inure himself to Hollywood. His style is dialed down, and the plot makes concessions that his later work, and even his earlier work, would not have allowed.

This film feels a little safe. But, hell, even a lesser Lang film is better than most of the films of the time.

V. Should You See It?

I'm always down for a Fritz Lang film, but you may not be. There are other, better films from the German Expressionist that I'd gladly refer you to. This wasn't a waste of time, and I am certainly not sad that I watched it, but I don't know that I consider this one an Absolute Must Watch.

Miscellany

- Lang was disappointed in the film. He badly wanted to rewrite it, to more aptly reflect Greene's novel, but was unable to do so, as the screenwriter, Seton I. Miller, also produced the movie. Greene, for his part, also considers this to be his least favorite adaption of his works.