Paramount did so well with Graham Greene and This Gun For Hire, making a star out of Alan Ladd that they went back to the same source for Ministry Of Fear using one of their best contract leading men Ray Milland as the star. The story starts out remarkably similar to Random Harvest where Milland is an inmate in an asylum.
But while Ronald Colman was a shell shocked World War I veteran, Milland was in there for murder. The Code firmly in place said you can't have the hero be a murderer even if it was for a mercy killing of his terminally ill wife. So Paramount cheated the novel by having Milland only by the poison, not use it, and then have the wife find it and use it on herself, according to him. But the authorities arrest him anyway, but he's given a light sentence of two years in a rubber room.
All of which make him reluctant to go to the police when some bizarre things start happening. At a bazaar no less when a fake fortune teller tells him to bid on a cake by guessing the weight. He gets the cake, but he's not the one it's intended for. The cake has a microfilm inside and the bazaar was a blind for some nasty enemy spies.
We don't know that yet, but when a blind man who Milland shares a compartment with on a train to London knocks him out and steals the cake, Milland and the audience knows something is afoot. This was the part that strained by credulity the most. If the guy wanted the cake so bad, I'd have reported the assault to the police and let the cake go. But Milland doesn't trust the cops, that's understandable, but to chase the thief over the moors while the train is stalled because of a Nazi air attack to me was a bit much.
Milland's curiosity sends him investigating the charity that was holding the bazaar and it's one of those refugee charities run by a brother and sister team played by Carl Esmond and Marjorie Reynolds. After that it's wading through a morass of mystery and deciding who's your friend and who's you and your country's foe.
Even with Fritz Lang who was second to none in directing psychological thrillers, Ministry Of Fear doesn't succeed half as well as This Gun For Hire. It's all right entertainment, but falls way short of being a classic.
But while Ronald Colman was a shell shocked World War I veteran, Milland was in there for murder. The Code firmly in place said you can't have the hero be a murderer even if it was for a mercy killing of his terminally ill wife. So Paramount cheated the novel by having Milland only by the poison, not use it, and then have the wife find it and use it on herself, according to him. But the authorities arrest him anyway, but he's given a light sentence of two years in a rubber room.
All of which make him reluctant to go to the police when some bizarre things start happening. At a bazaar no less when a fake fortune teller tells him to bid on a cake by guessing the weight. He gets the cake, but he's not the one it's intended for. The cake has a microfilm inside and the bazaar was a blind for some nasty enemy spies.
We don't know that yet, but when a blind man who Milland shares a compartment with on a train to London knocks him out and steals the cake, Milland and the audience knows something is afoot. This was the part that strained by credulity the most. If the guy wanted the cake so bad, I'd have reported the assault to the police and let the cake go. But Milland doesn't trust the cops, that's understandable, but to chase the thief over the moors while the train is stalled because of a Nazi air attack to me was a bit much.
Milland's curiosity sends him investigating the charity that was holding the bazaar and it's one of those refugee charities run by a brother and sister team played by Carl Esmond and Marjorie Reynolds. After that it's wading through a morass of mystery and deciding who's your friend and who's you and your country's foe.
Even with Fritz Lang who was second to none in directing psychological thrillers, Ministry Of Fear doesn't succeed half as well as This Gun For Hire. It's all right entertainment, but falls way short of being a classic.