Archival Print! Stephen Neale (Ray Milland), having beenincarcerated in an asylum for the mercy killing of his wife, is releasedinto the chaos of wartime London. A cake purchased at a bizarre bazaargives Neale unwitting entrée into a nightmarish adventureinvolving a Nazi spy ring, and he finds that, beneath the bombs, nothingis as it was in London, nor is it as it seems. As Graham Greene put it,"We cannot recognize the villain and we suspect the hero and theworld is a small cramped place." Paramount's Ministry of Fear isLang with shades of Greene, Greene's layered questions of faith heregiving way to Lang's sure (and surly) knowledge of fate. But the air ofmenace survives. As Paul M. Jensen writes in The Cinema of Fritz Lang,the director achieves his aims almost exclusively with atmosphere:"Stillness builds a feeling of anticipation, as if the empty airwere waiting for something to fill it...."