The Ministry of Fear

The Nazi regime, in countries it controlled and in those it intended to subvert, built up information on individuals in order to blackmail them into co-operation.

The next day, a man offers Rowe money for the cake and then tries to poison him, but an air raid bomb demolishes the house, knocking them both out.

Worried for himself and wary of the police, Rowe hires a private detective to watch him and goes to the charity that ran the fête.

The police tell him that the man who Rowe thought murdered is not dead, and the cake had a microfilm of secret plans hidden in it.

Willi escapes, intending to reach neutral Ireland with the microfilm sewn into his new suit, but when cornered by Rowe commits suicide.

[1] Graham Greene's protagonist, Arthur Rowe (Stephen Neale in the film), is profoundly tormented with guilt for his having murdered his wife.

The film omits all of Rowe's incarceration in Dr Forester's private asylum with amnesia, after the bomb in the booby-trapped case of books explodes.

Her brother Willi Hilfe, armed with a gun with a single bullet, commits suicide, in a railway station lavatory, when he cannot escape.

They go on together, lovers, but hardly the happy and carefree couple portrayed in the film: "They had to tread carefully for a lifetime, never speak without thinking twice ...