Ministry of Fear (1944)

“We thought you'd been killed.”

“Not quite.”

            I have bitched time and again on this blog about plots in films dealing with mistaken identity or characters being wrongly accused of something and being chased. THEY ARE SO OVER USED! It is becoming increasingly rare that I find a film with either plot enjoyable. Ministry of Fear is one of those films I found not enjoyable.

            Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) has just spent two years in an asylum. He is released back into society during World War II in England. In the town where the asylum is located there is a charity fair. Stephen goes into the fair to have some fun. He takes part in a raffle to guess the weight of a cake and win the cake. When he is done Stephen is told to visit the fortune teller in a nearby tent. The fortune teller claims not to predict the future but then tells him to guess the weight of the cake at a certain number. Once done with the teller Stephen goes back over to the guessing game and wins the cake. Just has he is about to leave a man comes speeding over in a car and runs over the teller. The ladies from the guessing game come running over to Stephen that he has to give the cake back since he guessed wrong. When looks over to the tent the teller and the man are staring Stephen down. Not thinking anything of the looks and the commotion Stephen gives the ladies a few dollars and takes the cake with him on the train into London.

            Before the train departs a blind man comes into the compartment that Stephen has been placed in. Planes and bombs can be heard outside so Stephen looks out the window. The blind man is not really blind and out of nowhere he starts beating Stephen. The train comes to a stop from the bombing and the two men run out. Where they run to get bombed but Stephen is alright but his cakes did not make it.

            In London Stephen goes to the headquarters of the charity who organized the fair. He wants to know who the teller was and where he can find her to speak to her about what happened to him. The charity is run by siblings Willi and Carla Hilfe two Austrian refugees. Willi finds the woman lives in London and the two go to have a word with her. When they arrive at the house the woman who greets them is not the woman who was the fortune teller but a young beautiful socialite who helped organize the fair and hired the teller. She invites Stephen and Willi to a séance she was just about to hold. During the séance the psychic reveals some energy in the room and it strikes a nerve in Stephen and he freaks out. In that same moment a gun goes off and a man is killed. Stephen had a gun in his pocket with one bullet that he had picked up at the site where he fought the not-blind-man. Everyone blames Stephen and they call the police. When he takes out the gun from his pocket there are more bullets in it than before. He has to get away and Willi devises the plan for Stephen to punch him and then run away.

            Now, Stephen is on the run to get to the bottom of who is trying to kill him and why. There is a spy within the British ministry and he must find out who it is before he is returned to the asylum or worse murdered for something he does not either know or have.

            Ministry of Fear is a film I have been waiting to see for a long time. I always see it on sale on Barnes and Noble during the Criterion sales over the summer and it is always super cheap when it is fifty percent off. Since I always notice it during the sale I have always wanted to see it especially because Fritz Lang is the director. I guess I was expecting a good story that would keep me interested and unfortunately it did not. I was bored with the story almost from the beginning when Stephen is chased off the train because I knew that it was going to have a plot that drives me crazy with hatred. Ministry of Fear is not a terrible film. The pacing is just a bit slow. The fact that I was not into it more than likely has to do with the fact that I hyped it up for so long in my mind. Damn the Criterion collection for making me want to see a film so bad and then letting me down! It is worth seeing at least once especially because it is a Fritz Lang film. Ministry of Fear is available to view on YouTube in full. 

M (1931)

“At least while we hear children sing we know they’re alive.”

            I do not believe there is such a thing as a perfect film. There are some that I believe come close but like people all films have flaws. There is one film, however, that has possibly changed my belief that there is such a thing as a perfect, flawless film. That one film is Fritz Lang’s 1931 masterpiece M.

            The film opens to a group of children playing a game. The game is played by one little girl singing a gruesome song about how a man in black will come and get them and chop them into pieces. One woman hears the children singing and yells at that to stop playing such a horrid song. The children stop for a moment until they believe the woman is out of earshot. The woman brings laundry to the apartment of a Mrs. Beckmann. She washes some of the laundry until she hears the cuckoo clock chime the hour when she expects her daughter to be home. When the cuckoo sounds she puts down the laundry and begins to make dinner.

            Mrs. Beckmann’s daughter Elsie goes to school in the city. She is walking down the sidewalk bouncing her ball to an ominous rhythm. She bounces it against a poster for a wanted man. The wanted man is a murderer who has murdered children and has yet to be caught. The shadowy figure of a man against the post comes up to Elsie. He takes her to get a balloon and some candy.

            Back the apartment Mrs. Beckmann begins to frantically worry about her daughter. Elsie was supposed to be home and she has not arrived. She yells out into the apartment complex and into the streets for Elsie.

            In an area of plants and trees the small hand of Elsie Beckmann falls out. The scene cuts to her balloon floating between two telephone pole wires.

            The next day the newspapers blare out that another little girl has been murdered. This new murder and the fact that the murderer has not yet been caught sends an extreme amount of panic and paranoia throughout the city. A group of men sitting in a café reading the newspaper with the latest headline immediately begin accusing one another of being the killer. An old man is mobbed in the street when he is seen speaking to a little girl after she had asked him the time. While panic erupts around him the murderer writes a letter to a newspaper since the police would not print his last one and whistles an upbeat tune that creates an unsettling feeling.

            The police are doing everything they can to catch the murderer. They are encouraging his letters to the newspapers in the hopes that they can somehow lift his fingerprint from it. They also have it psychoanalyzed and poured over for clues. To further help track down the murderer the police enlist the help of the homeless of the city. They give the homeless men streets to watch and corners to watch over.

            The police begin to narrow down their search to a list of patients who have been released from mental institutions within the last year. They track down the former patients to their current addresses. One detective goes to an apartment complex where the murderer has just walked out of only moments before.

            Even the world of the underground is after the murderer. The police have been performing so many raids on their rackets that they cannot get any business done. The heads of some of the gangs have a meeting and pledge to take down the murderer themselves. They place their informants all over the city just like the police have placed the homeless men.

            While walking down the street the murderer stops to look at a store front. In the reflection of a mirror on display he sees a young girl. The temptation is too much for him and when the girl walks away he follows her whistling his uncomfortable happy tune. Before he has a chance to grab the girl she fortunately finds her mother.

            Sometime later the murderer is walking and whistling down the street with another young girl. He passes a blind man selling balloons. The blind man recognizes the whistle as the same one he heard the day Elsie Beckmann disappeared. The man calls the attention of a boy and has the boy follow the murderer. The boy sends word that the murderer has been found and has another girl. When the murderer walks out of the store someone bumps into him. What that person did was mark him with an “M” so people on the streets and the police would know who he is. The murderer realizes he is now being followed and runs away into a building. The leaders of the gangs get word about the murderer hiding in the building. They storm the building knocking out the guards taking complete control over it. They just tracked the murderer to a junk room on one of the top floors when one of the guards comes to and pulls an alarm warning the police of trouble.

            The leaders manage to find the murderer and bring him someplace outside of town. They hold a trial in front of a large room of people. They interrogate him and get him to confess to killing the girls. Unfortunately one of the criminals was caught when the police answered the alarm and he is caught. He confesses that the other leaders have the murderer and where they can be found. The police come to the building and take the murderer away for a real trial. Elsie Beckmann’s mother is at the real trial. She mournfully cries out that nothing will ever bring her daughter back.

            One of the aspects of this film I love the most is how there is no music score. All the background noise is just that. There is no music to create tension with the exception of the murderer’s whistling. The bells of the clocks and the bouncing of the ball at the beginning was genius. Those sounds proclaimed the coming of the end of life for Elsie Beckmann. There were other scenes where the sound cuts out. For a few moments I thought YouTube was being stubborn and cut the sound out but then I realized it was part of the film itself and later learned that those few silent scenes were due to the fact that sound was still relatively new to films. The second moment of silence in the film happened when the murderer was looking at the display window. That silence was perfect because it was as if it had come from the murderer himself as if was blocking out all the noise around him and only concentrating on the little girl behind him.

            Fritz Lang’s direction in this film deserves every ounce of praise. It was stunning, raw, emotional, tense, and dramatic without going over the top. I could not get over his direction in the beginning when Mrs. Beckmann is calling out for Elsie. Lang shows us an empty room where the laundry hangs and an empty place at the table where Elsie should have been. The meaning of that emptiness is so impactful.

            M is a film I have been wanting to see for quite some time. I am currently participating in TCM’s Into Darkness: Investigating Film Noir. It is a free online class where four times a week they send out clips and questions about certain noirs. The first ten minutes of M kicked off the course. M is a considered a precursor to the noir genre. It is fascinating to see where all the elements of a typical noir got its start.

            M is that rare flawless film that is all around genius, stunning, intense, dramatic, and suspenseful. If you are a film buff or just want to see a perfectly made film than M is a must watch. It is available to view in full with subtitles on YouTube.

Silent Sundays: Spies (1928)

“Almighty God, what is at play here?”

            Fritz Lang’s 1928 Spies is one of the best silent films I have viewed. Like his 1927 epic Metropolis, Spies is nonstop from the first scene to the last. You get caught up in the world of espionage, who is the good guy and who is the bad, and even a love affair (why spy movie would be complete without a little romance?).

            The German government’s secret service has been after a criminal mastermind named Haghi. He is always steps ahead of the agency and has recently had several of their agents killed. Mr. Jason head of the secret service brings in Agent No. 326 to find Haghi. Haghi’s latest objective is to get his hands on a treaty that is supposed to be signed by the Japanese and returned to the country. He goes so far as to bring in and blackmail a government official’s wife to make her tell where her husband will be signing the treaty.

            Haghi’s agent inside the secret service has photographed 326. Haghi gives the photograph of 326 to his Russian female agent Sonja. He wants Sonja to fall in love with the agent and kill him. Sonja has some reservations one that Haghi points out is her falling in love with the mark. The inevitable happens. Sonja has been working with a man named General Jellusic who has been selling secrets to Haghi. 326 sees Sonja with Jellusic and believe she has betrayed his love. When 326 is out drinking away his sadness he is told that Sonja is a spy. For her betrayal of falling in love and refusing to do what she commanded Haghi takes Sonja prisoner and says she will only be free when either he or 326 succeeds.

            Hopefully you have seen enough spy films to know that the good guy succeeds and gets the girl. The ending to this film is very good. The reason for Haghi always being one step ahead of the secret service is someone you would truly never figure out.

            Fritz Lang was amazing. His direction was flawless. There is a scene with the Japanese agent Matsimoto that was filmed to perfection it is a tragic scene but so well filmed. There are so many great scenes besides the one I mentioned. German silent films are becoming some of my favorite types of films and this is mostly due to Lang’s films because of his direction, sets, and stories. Lang wrote the film as well. The story is a spy story you would see written for the screen today. I wish spy movies today would have twists and turns like Spies.

              I found Haghi to be one of the best bad guys in I have ever seen in a spy film. He was sinister looking you could just tell he was evil. What made Haghi scarier was how he was always ahead of the good guys. It seemed at one point in the film the good guys would never catch up even though they did literally right at the last minute. 

            Spies is an excellent silent film. It drags in some areas especially the “love” scenes between 326 and Sonja but the rest is just nonstop and intense. You will like Spies if you like James Bond, Alias or anything that has to do with the spy genre. Youtube currently has Spies in its original 146 minute cut rather than the 90 minute American cut (just know that the user who uploaded the film put terrible music to it).