Ministry of Fear

Fritz Lang delivers a third-rate 39 Steps from a novel by Graham Greene, but at least had the grace to disown the result. It was successful at the time, and some accord it classic status, but its twists and turns are slow and stilted. Ray Milland is awkward and unconvincing as the lead character, just released from an asylum for the mercy killing of his wife, when he wins a cake at a fair that turns out to contain microfilm being smuggled out of the country by a web of Nazi spies, a plain vanilla maguffin if there ever was one. And the rest of the cast is uniformly unbelievable. The mystery is tricky, and some expressionistic elements work, but who cares? (1944, TCM/T, n.) *3*