M

This early German talkie is so unassuming that you'd be forgiven for missing its impact. I mean this in the sense that it was director Fritz Lang's first film with sound, and yet he goes about his business with such confidence that you would never guess this to be case. Everything about M is so self-assured and expertly handled that it's hard to believe that it was made in an era of widespread artistic instability. The beginning of the sound-era was marked by a massive sea change that saw many stars of cinema lacking confidence, and not everyone on the other side of the camera knew exactly what to do with the art form either. Many early talkies are inherently 'creaky'. M is no such beast.

Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) is a child-murderer at large in Berlin. His impulse to molest and kill children is something that he has little to no control over, and as these murders begin to increase we see the hysterical reaction of the public to these events. Inspector Karl Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) launches a hi-tech investigation into the killings, using state of the art techniques such as fingerprint and handwriting analysis. He races against time to catch Hans before the enraged public do, and things come to a head when the angry mob finally corner the desperate killer in an abandoned building.

M pretty much laid down the slate for all serial killer films to come. Through a sparse and deliberate use of sound, unexpected cross-cutting, and meticulous recreations of the turning wheels of justice (both the official and unofficial kinds), director Fritz Lang brought about a wholly realistic and chilling portrayal of a city gripped by fear and anger. The closing fist of human frustration that eventually traps and captures the murderous pedophile acts as a comment on mob mentality (something that Lang would later revisit in Fury) and the degrees accorded to certain kinds of crime. Hans' own impassioned speech at the end, and the general despondency that accompanies his sentencing, alludes to an intelligence seldom seen in films from any era, let alone one from 1931.

HIGHLIGHT: Peter Lorre manages to actually evoke sympathy as the pathetic and porcine killer in this, his film debut. The performance is reinforced somewhat by Lang's expressionist use of reflections to help externalise Hans' inner feelings. Unfortunately this wonderfully unique performance led to Lorre being typecast as such lowly characters for the rest of his career.

NOTE ON CATEGORISATION: Whilst it's not quite a 'true' film noir in the sense that it wasn't a part of the wave of films made by Hollywood in the mid-'40s, M can be seen as seminal in the genre's creation. Fritz Lang would go on to direct several film noir classics after emigrating to Hollywood, such as The Woman in the Window.

DIRECTOR: Fritz Lang
WRITER/SOURCE: Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou, Paul Falkenberg and Adolf Jansen. Inspired by the real life German killer Peter Kurten.
KEY ACTORS: Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke, Gustaf Grundgens, Theodor Loos

RELATED TEXTS
- Remade as an American film in 1951, also called M.
- Wernicke reprised the character of Inspector Lohmann in Fritz Lang's 1933 film The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
- Some other famous, expressionist and (mostly) German tales of crime: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Threepenny Opera, The Hands of Orlac and The Night of the Hunter.
- See also Lang's later film, Fury, for more on mob mentality.