Film: M
Director: Fritz Lang
Country: Germany
Released: May 1931
Runtime: 111 minutes
Genre: Thriller
Studio: Nero-Film
Influenced: Orson Welles, Hitchcock, Jonathan Demme, David Fincher
One of the most highly influential early sound films, and one of my all-time favourite movies, is Fritz Lang’s M. The visual craft, the use of sound, the acting, the pacing of the plot – it's all perfection, and a whole genre of suspenseful thrillers featuring serial killers would use this film as its blueprint. From the outset of M we’re introduced to the killer Hans Beckert, played with aplomb by Peter Lorre, looking in the mirror and playing with his face as if he's incapable of normal human expression, eyes bulging as if to denote madness, in a scene reminiscent of Joaquin Phoenix's Joker (Todd Philips, 2019).
Watching the film you realise that M is ground zero for so many thriller movie tropes, from the flawed but committed police detective (Lohmann) who eats and drinks badly, to the use of musical leitmotifs and audio calling cards for the criminal (in M, it's the theme from Peer Gynt and Beckert's whistling). Cameraman Fritz Arno Wagner was also responsible for many of the film's iconic visual moments, such as the missing child’s balloon getting stuck in telephone lines, or Beckert discovering that an M (for ‘murderer’) has been chalked on his shoulder.
One of the film's many remarkable qualities is the way that Lorre helps us identify with the psychopathic killer Beckert, who is terrified by the impulses he feels (“I always feel it behind me. It’s myself. And I follow me. In silence. But I can hear it. Yes, sometimes it’s like I’m chasing myself. I want to escape from myself. But I can’t!”). Just like in Metropolis, Lang is trying to help his audience (as hard as it might be) to see the humanity in a world that can often feel scary and alienating.
The script, co-written by Lang's wife Thea von Harbou, was based on the actual case of a child killer in Düsseldorf – just like the film, the case caused reverberations throughout the city and led to a police crackdown that disrupted organised crime, to such an extent that the criminal underworld became involved in tracking the killer down so that normal illegal activities could continue as before.
As forces converge on Beckert in M, we see his capture and then trial in front of a public kangaroo court, where opposition is strong to the murderer being tried in a proper court of law and being found insane, and so escaping the revenge they'd like to see. The film ends with the mother of one of the victims imploring the audience and everyone (us, in fact) to protect our children. But Lang isn't just putting a killer on trial in M, he's also got his targets set on society, specifically Nazi Germany and its growing passion during the late 20s and 30s for witch hunts.
Comments