Ministry of Fear

Stephen Neale, just released from an asylum, stops at a charity fete on his way to London and wins a cake by accident. The cake was meant for someone else. From that moment he is hunted, and he can explain himself to nobody, because his past makes him a suspect from the start. Fritz Lang directed, from Graham Greene's novel. Ray Milland plays Neale. The film takes place during the war inside the London blackout, and Lang turns that straight into a visual instrument: most scenes are built in darkness around a single source of light. The seance and the train compartment are the best examples. Lang was unhappy with the script and later said he had no authority to change it; Greene did not like the film either. Even so it counts among the best-constructed thrillers of the director's American period. At its centre is the idea Lang kept returning to: an innocent person becomes guilty because he cannot prove otherwise. Who it is for: viewers who like noir style and wartime espionage thrillers. Who it is not for: anyone after fidelity to the novel; the book's psychological side is largely removed.