MINISTRY OF FEAR: the benefit of being a blank actor

It's rather difficult today to understand the appeal of Ray Milland as a star actor. He's undeniably charming and handsome in a bland kind of way but hardly memorable, yet for 20 years he was a bona fide Hollywood film star. Between 1935 and 1955 he made more than 60 movies working with some of the biggest names on both sides of the camera.
He started out in the 30s as a suave and slightly stiff leading man in romantic comedies and expanded his range in the 40s to include an assortment of morally unscrupulous and mentally fragile characters.
Perhaps it was his lack of a discernible screen persona which allowed him to enjoy such a long career. It allowed him to maintain credibility as he switched between roles because he never became associated in the mind of the cinema-going public with one particular type.
These were the thoughts swirling through my mind as I watched - and thoroughly enjoyed - Milland in action in the 1944 thriller MINISTRY OF FEAR. Set mostly in a rubble-strewn London under devastating nightly attack by Hitler's Luftwaffe, he plays Stephen Neale, a man who's grasp on reality is in doubt following his release after two years in a mental asylum. Making his way back to the bomb-damaged capital he finds himself caught up in a Nazi spy ring and forced to go on the run after being framed for murder.
The seeds of doubt over Neale's mental state are sown in the story's opening moments then copiously watered and encouraged to sprout by the events that follow. Milland's relatively anonymous screen persona is a great advantage here because it's difficult for us to predict whether he will ultimately succeed or fail. He has no predetermined type to inform with confidence our guesswork about his fate. Whatever travails Milland's contemporaries Cary Grant or Ronald Colman (for example) endured during the course of a movie one could be pretty sure they'd wind up on top at the conclusion with the girl at their side. There's far less certainty with Milland and that keeps the tension going almost until the finale.
However, the film's effectiveness is not due to Milland alone. MINISTRY OF FEAR is based on the novel by Graham Greene and directed by the great Fritz Lang who creates a wonderfully atmospheric studio-bound version of London peopled by all manner of strange characters who may or may not be what they seem.
Milland went on to pick up the best actor Oscar in 1946 for his performance in "The Lost Weekend." and it's interesting to speculate whether his portrayal of an alcoholic writer on a bender would have been as effective without his having first accumulated a little emotional baggage as the tormented Stephen Neale in MINISTRY OF FEAR.