102 Ministry of Fear

[MichaelB]

MINISTRY OF FEAR
(Fritz Lang, 1944)
Release date: 20 August 2018
Limited Blu-ray Edition (UK Blu-ray premiere)

Set during Blitz-torn wartime England, Ray Milland (Dial M for Murder, The Lost Weekend) stars as a man just released from a sanatorium who stumbles into an elaborate and murderous Nazi plot. Reminiscent of Lang's early expressionist films (The Spiders, Dr Mabuse the Gambler, M) and full of bravura set pieces and hallucinatory visuals, Ministry of Fear is one of Lang’s finest films – a mature and beautifully crafted thriller, and a vivid adaptation of Graham Greene’s celebrated novel.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION SPECIAL FEATURES:
• 2K restoration
• Original mono audio
• The BFI Interview with Fritz Lang (1962, 80 mins): archival audio recording of the celebrated filmmaker in conversation with Stanley Reed at London’s National Film Theatre
• Selected scenes commentary with author and film historian Neil Sinyard
• Between Two Worlds (2018, 21 mins): a newly filmed appreciation and analysis by film historian Tony Rayns
• Creative Allies (2018, 25 mins): Adrian Wootton, OBE, author of The Films of Graham Greene and CEO of Film London, considers the contributions of the people who shaped the film
• Original theatrical trailer
• Image gallery: promotional photography and publicity material
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Samm Deighan, Graham Greene on Lang and Ministry of Fear, recollections by Fritz Lang, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
• UK premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited Edition of 3,000 copies

#PHILTD102
BBFC cert: PG
REGION B
EAN: 5037899071564

[domino harvey]

Great cover and nice set of extras. Shame I'm not wild about the film

[rapta]

First real clash with Criterion's catalogue here. Well done Powerhouse!

Will definitely be pre-ordering this. Lang, Milland, Greene, and Rayns on the extras. Sounds good to me...

[DarkImbecile]

Damn! I actually liked this enough to have to seriously consider double-dipping to improve on the bare bones Criterion.

[domino harvey]

I mean, you could recoup at least 2/3 of the Indicator cost by reselling your Criterion

[Lowry_Sam]

I love Lang, but for me this was one of his biggest disappointments. With the subject matter, the actors involved & Lang's ability to create suspense & atmosphere, this had such potential & yet the end product falls so very far short of what it could have been.

[whaleallright]

when does Tony Rayns sleep?

[MichaelB]

Tony is one of those people like Kim Newman who can just turn up and reel off a word-perfect piece in a single take. A talent like that is beyond price for a Blu-ray producer, which is why Tony and Kim keep getting these gigs (and it’s also why Kat Ellinger’s recent rise has been so meteoric).

That lengthy piece about Audition on the Arrow edition? He rattled that off in the same session as recording the commentary for A Touch of Zen for Eureka - I don’t imagine he intended it to be as long as it turned out, as he did it at very short notice, but that’s what happened.

(See also horror musicologist extraordinaire David Huckvale, who recently recorded enough material for multiple pieces across two labels in a single day - I’m editing three of them for Indicator, but I know he covered something for Anolis in the same session.)

[MichaelB]

Final specs announced:

[bugsy_pal]

I saw this relatively recently (on the Criterion BD), and actually liked it quite a bit. It's kinda 'silly' for Lang but still has plenty of atmosphere and lovely cinematography. I think I'll have to double-dip.

[Florinaldo]

It's kinda 'silly' for Lang but still has plenty of atmosphere and lovely cinematography. I think I'll have to double-dip.

Minor Lang certainly, but it has some nice moments for example the blind man getting on the train, the tell-tale visual aftermath of a gun shot through a door or Dan Duryea casually carrying those humongous tailor's shears; plus some callbacks to the first Mabuse, like characters jumping away from a bomb explosion in a room or the séance.

It's a good thing that it gets a worthwhile treatment on BD, after the somewhat disappointing Criterion.

Will publishers now turn their attention to even more neglected Lang movies? House by the River comes to mind, although there is a Wild Side edition with a nice set of extras, but with burnt-in French subtitles and a copy that would benefit from some cleaning up. There's also Liliom (it's available as an extra on Carousel but it has not gotten a good edition on its own). One can also dream big and wish for You and Me to surface on video; with Lang and Weil, plus Sylvia Sydney in her last outing with the director, it's probably worth seeing at least for the curiosity factor.

[Drucker]

You And Me is available on a TCM disc.

[Florinaldo]

You And Me is available on a TCM disc.

Quite, but it is a bare bones edition as I recall; I should have made it clearer that I was wishing for a more elaborate treatment of this film, perhaps detailing the Brechtian borrowings in storytelling techniques, and even a BD if there would be any benefit to it.

There's also a German DVD of the film.

[MichaelB]

A quick round-up of reviews:

• CineOutsider
• DVD Beaver
• Mondo Digital

[therewillbeblus]

I've really come around on this one, which feels like the quintessential B-noir. The material is all over the place, but it's a blessing in disguise that Lang wasn't allowed to change a bit of the script because the whole thing plays out like a Hitchcockian man-on-the-run thriller, except the tone and narrative shifts every scene. Sometimes this can ruin a film, and I can certainly understand why people dislike this one, but in a sharp director's hands the curio events are amplified (this is a nice sister film to The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse in this respect) and tonal incongruities kept harnessed by Lang's formal control and wit. It's a wacky mess, but a mess done well, and effectively mirror's both the psychological eccentricities of Milland's character -particularly the borderline-insanity he's come to identify with in a fragile state post-lockup - and the unbelievable terrors of wartime paranoia; especially towards the end of the war - an exhaustive period of unbelievable acts reaching its zenith. I mean, the noir plot centers around a cake, séances seem like a reasonable place to drop in, and nobody appears all too surprised by anything while we certainly are. It's silly and sincere, a sloppy juggling act and a thrilling blast.

[MichaelB]

One can also dream big and wish for You and Me to surface on video; with Lang and Weil, plus Sylvia Sydney in her last outing with the director, it's probably worth seeing at least for the curiosity factor.

Happy to oblige. (Albeit six years later.)

[thirtyframesasecond]

I love the Greene novel, one of his 'entertainments', and whilst this wasn't an exact translation, I remember it being fun enough.

[domino harvey]

I revisited this one too but I remain a skeptic. The biggest issue here, and it's just not something I could ever get over, is that the inciting action makes no sense whatsoever. Let's say you DID win a cake and a fake blind man DID hit you over the head and abscond with it onto a makeshift battleground. Why would you follow them? And even if you did that, why would you then paint a target on yourself by going to a private eye and all the rest of it? Obviously once Milland is in it and his only way out is through, these questions don't matter, but there was never any compelling reason why he was in it to begin with other than that the plot necessitated it. And an absurd story like this needs every little bit of grounding it can muster. There are some beautiful images and times when one wishes it did work, but man, this script is just terrible!

[therewillbeblus]

I think I wrote about this in my initial writeup elsewhere on the forum, but his absurd behavior in the first act sorta ‘works’ when you’re watching it the first time because you’re viewing Milland as an insane individual. He’s just been released from an institution and is still exhibiting very odd behavior - all before the reveal later of why he was there. However the script tries to form him into a ‘normal’ shmoe, I never buy it. You’re right: This guy is super weird and his actions make no sense.. he's nuts! So his confession that’s supposed to normalize him always feels false to me. I dunno, it doesn’t bother me so much when I view the character as a lame puzzle that I have no interest in solving, but it’s funny to watch all this crazy stuff happen around a crazy person. He feels at home.