Ministry of Fear

Stephen Neale (Ray Milland), in an asylum for the mercy killing of his wife, is released into the chaos of wartime London. He finds that, beneath the bombs, nothing is as it was—nor as it seems. As the author, Graham Greene, put it, “We cannot recognize the villain and we suspect the hero and the world is a small cramped place.” A cake purchased at a bizarre bazaar gives Neale unwitting entrée to a Nazi spy ring operating under a strangely spiritual mantle. Ministry of Fear is Fritz Lang with shades of Greene, Greene’s questions of faith giving way to Lang’s knowledge of fate.