324 - Ministry of Fear, United States, 1944. Dir. Fritz Lang.

Monday, November 20, 2017

324 - Ministry of Fear, United States, 1944.  Dir. Fritz Lang.

Cake!

Boy, that cake sure must be tasty.  At least three people die for it.  One of them twice.

We have seen Fritz Lang as a German director in M  (1931) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse  (1933), and we have seen him portraying a version of himself as the great director in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt  (1963).

Now we see him as an American Hollywood director at the height of wartime film noir.

Stephen Neale watches the clock tick.  When it reaches 12:00 noon he will be released from the Lembridge Asylum, where he has spent the past two years.  He was sentenced to the asylum rather than jail because whatever he did he did under extenuating circumstances.

He chooses to take a train to London to begin his new life.  He is a widower now, and he intends to start again.  While waiting for the train he attends what is called in Britain a village fete, a local outdoor festival, part fair, for the purpose of raising funds for charity.

He pays a shilling to guess the weight of a cake.  Then he gets his fortune told.  And then strangely, the fortune teller asks him to guess the weight of the cake again.  She gives him the weight.

Four pounds, fifteen and one-half ounces.

Congratulations, Sir!  You have won a cake.  He takes it and leaves.  But something has gone wrong.  He was not supposed to win it.  We told that palm reader not to guess the future.  Somebody says something to somebody and they try to get the cake back.

Nothing doing.  Even after they change the correct weight, Stephen's original guess still comes the closest.

He boards the train.

A blind man sits with him.

The blind man has a cane.

A cane can be a weapon.

Stephen offers him some cake.  He crumbles it strangely with his fingers and lets the crumbs fall to the compartment floor.

Looking for something?

Yes.  But it is not in his piece.  It must still be in the large portion still in the box.

The train stops.

The blind man uses that cane.

He takes the cake.

Stephen gets up.  Gives chase.  The German planes are bombing overhead.  The blind man pulls out a gun and starts shooting at Stephen.  The planes drop bombs ever more closely to them.

Something explodes.

Somebody dies.

And we're off.

We will meet bad men and beautiful women and strange twists and turns as we risk our lives repeatedly in search of the truth.

Yesterday in The Uninvited (1944) Ray Milland attended a seance.  Today in Ministry of Fear (1944), the same year, Ray Milland attends a seance.  He may want to reconsider these excursions.  They do not always turn out so well.

Maybe he will get the girl in the end.  If he does not die first.  If she does not die.  If she does not turn out to be, well . . .

Whom can you trust?

Anyone?