LET THEM EAT CAKE

In the Ministry of Fear they bake better than they spy.


Fritz Lang was one of the most important directors of his era, both in his native Germany and in the U.S., and was a pioneer of the film noir form. Movies like Scarlet Street and especially The Big Heat are essential noir viewing. Ministry of Fear dates from a bit earlier and finds Lang saddled with what we consider to be a substandard script that through sheer artistry he makes into a watchable film. Ray Milland, Marjorie Reynolds, and Dan Duryea headline in a spy tale that revolves around Lang’s favorite villains—the Nazis. Jewish and German, he left his homeland for Paris and beyond during the ascent of the Nazis during the 1930s, so the subject was personal for him, and was one he’d dealt with in previous films such as Cloak and Dagger and Hangmen Also Die.

In Ministry of Fear Milland plays a man who spends two years in a British asylum and is released at a time when World War II is raging and London is being bombed. He goes to a charity carnival and is enticed into guessing a cake’s weight for a chance to win it, and because he’s been given the correct answer by a fortuneteller, is victorious. But it’s soon clear that the correct weight wasn’t supposed to be given to him, and he isn’t supposed to have won the cake. But he really wants it and resists attempts by the carny folks to take it back. He loses it during a train ride when a passenger beats the snot out of him for it, and at that point finally realizes the obvious—sweet though this confection may have been, it wasn’t sought by various and sundry for its flavor, but because inside was something important. He wants answers, and he’ll have to risk his neck to get them.

Generally with movies it’s best to simply accept the premise, but there are limits. We were never clear on why it was necessary to put this important item in a cake. We understand subterfuge is involved in the spy game, but why not just hand the item over in an alley, or a pub bathroom, or a parked car? And if food must be involved, why a cake? Why not a haggis, or something else very few people want to just gobble up on the spot? A dried cod maybe. A blood sausage would have done. Plus they’re easy to transport. You can just stick them in your pockets. And in a tight spot a whack across the nose with a blood sausage is far more effective than shoving cake in someone’s mug. The cake gimmick was probably—strike that—certainly better explained in Graham Greene’s source novel. We haven’t read it but we’re confident about that. It could have been Lang who screwed the pooch, but it was more likely Seton I. Miller. He was screenwriter as well as executive producer.

In any case Milland bumbles his way through a train trip, across a moor, in and out of a crazy séance, and into a maze of misdirection to the eventual revelation of what’s inside the cake, but the whole time we kept thinking the movie should be called Ministry of Cut-Rate Spies. We don’t mean to say it’s a total loss. It isn’t like the Eddie Izzard comedy routine, “Cake or Death.” You won’t choose death over cake. But it’s a pretty uninspiring flick. The old dramas that have survived have done so for a simple reason. Most of them are good. Ministry of Fear isn’t bad. It’s just meh. It’s like a cake that fell—it’s flat and dense, but teases you with how yummy it could have been. It premiered in England today in 1944.

Here, have your cake. And eat it too. Heh.

I prefer blood sausage for train trips, but I guess it’s better for you I’m not shoving one of those in your face, eh?

Wow, you sort of… crush the shit out of your cake before eating it.

Have I been eating cake wrong the whole time I’ve been in England?
 
Femme Fatale Image

ABOUT

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1924—Dion O'Banion Gunned Down

Dion O’Banion, leader of Chicago’s North Side Gang is assassinated in his flower shop by members of rival Johnny Torrio’s gang, sparking the bloody five-year war between the North Side Gang and the Chicago Outfit that culminates in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

1940—Walt Disney Becomes Informer

Walt Disney begins serving as an informer for the Los Angeles office of the FBI, with instructions to report on Hollywood subversives. He eventually testifies before HUAC, where he fingers several people as Communist agitators. He also accuses the Screen Actors Guild of being a Communist front.

1921—Einstein Wins Nobel

German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein is awarded the Nobel Prize for his work with the photoelectric effect, a phenomenon in which electrons are emitted from matter as a consequence of their absorption of energy from electromagnetic radiation. In practical terms, the phenomenon makes possible such devices as electroscopes, solar cells, and night vision goggles.

1938—Kristallnacht Begins

Nazi Germany’s first large scale act of anti-Jewish violence begins after the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan. The event becomes known as Kristallnacht, and in total the violent rampage destroys more than 250 synagogues, causes the deaths of nearly a hundred Jews, and results in 25,000 to 30,000 more being arrested and sent to concentration camps.

1923—Hitler Stages Revolt

In Munich, Germany, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in the Beer Hall Putsch, an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government. Also known as the Hitlerputsch or the Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch, the attempted coup was inspired by Benito Mussolini’s successful takeover of the Italian government.

1932—Roosevelt Unveils CWA

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create temporary winter jobs for more than 4 million of the unemployed.

A collection of red paperback covers from Dutch publisher De Vrije Pers.
Uncredited art for Hans Lugar's Line-Up! for Scion American publishing.
Uncredited cover art for Lesbian Gym by Peggy Swenson, who was in reality Richard Geis.

VINTAGE ADVERTISING

Things you'd love to buy but can't anymore

Vintage Ad Image

Around the web