Ministry of Fear

In the early 1940s, soon after director Fritz Lang fled Germany and arrived in Hollywood, he contributed to the war effort by applying his talent for spy movies and shadowy thrillers to the anti-Nazi cause. Based on a novel by Graham Greene, 1944's Ministry of Fear—set on the home front in Britain—stars Ray Milland as civilian Stephen Neale, who steps out of a mental asylum (after being sentenced for the mercy killing of his dying wife) and into the middle of a Nazi espionage ring. The screenplay by writer-producer Seton I. Miller plays down the Nazi rhetoric and turns the script into something more like an Alfred Hitchcock film, with Neale as an energetic innocent tangled up in a deadly conspiracy—the classic wrong man in the wrong place. While not Lang's best film of the era (or even his most interesting portrait of paranoia and malevolent forces; see 1941's Man Hunt or 1945's Scarlet Street), Ministry of Fear is a lively production with unexpected turns and otherwise unthreatening situations made sinister through tilted camera angles. Other heroes might spiral into doubt and darkness, but Neale is all conviction and buoyant optimism, and Lang constantly undercuts expectations when it comes to the oddball rogues' gallery of agents and bystanders, all of whom are playing roles within roles. Looking sharp on DVD and Blu-ray with a new 2K restoration, extras include a video interview with film scholar Joe McElhaney, and a booklet. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)