Review of M (1931) by Dan S — 11 Sep 2012

Fritz Lang's 1931 masterpiece M is, in my eyes, one of the twenty-five greatest films ever made. It is film that is so entertaining and rich in detail and texture that throughout its seventy-eight years of existence, it hasnâ??t aged a bit and continues to engage audiences today who see it for the first time and people who go back re-watch it (like me).

The film follows Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre, in a performance of absolute riveting brilliance), a plump pedophile who has been murdering young girls in the city of Berlin. The film opens with him encountering and killing (implied) a young girl named Elsie Beckman (Inge Landgut). The news of Elsieâ??s abduction soon spreads throughout Berlin and the local police force headed by Inspector Karl Lohmann search for the pedophile using â??state-of-the-artâ?? technique. The news of the killings also makes its way to the members of organized who feel that their â??businessâ?? will be threatened by Hansâ?? presence. Together, the criminals join together to search for the disturbed and rather frightened killer.

Much of what has been described so far make up the first act and the first half of the second act. The second half of the second act deals with an extended sequence inside an office building of the Berlin criminals trapping and eventually kidnapping the deranged psychopath. The third involves the police capturing one of the criminals who was accidentally behind at the building. The criminal eventually tells the police where Hans has been taken. The final minutes contain one of the greatest scenes ever captured on film. Hans is taken to trial before the criminals. Fritz Lang wisely begins this scene with several extended silent shots of the face of the criminals in the courtroom as they prepare to bring him to â??justiceâ??. In this scene, Peter Lorre shows his great acting talent as he begs for mercy and claims that he could not help himself.

This was probably the fifteenth time Iâ??ve viewed Fritz Langâ??s M. I first saw it in 2000 on my momâ??s Criterion laserdisc of the film and since then itâ??s on constant circulation on my DVD (the Criterion 2-Disc DVD set contains probably the best print and subtitle translation of the film) and laserdisc players; I even got the chance to see a restored 35mm print of the film at the Film Forum in New York a few years ago. However, this time, I viewed on a fine looking 16mm print that was missing ten minutes of footage and was poorly translated. It wasnâ??t the best experience Iâ??ve had watching the film. In fact, directly after it was over, I went back to my dorm to watch the Criterion DVD to satisfy myself.

Fritz Lang, who is known by most people for his other masterpiece Metropolis, was a filmmaker of enormous talent who had a great gift of being able to direct scenes to absolute perfection. Aside from being a perfectionist, he has been regarded as a visionary, a genius, a womanizer, and an alleged Nazi (despite claiming to be anti-Nazi because of his Catholic upbringing). His earlier film Metropolis (1927) came out of the German Expressionist era, which began with Robert Wienneâ??s The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1919) and continued with films from F.W. Murnau such as Nosferatu (1922) and Faust (1926), and finally ended at about 1929, but I personally consider M to be the final German Expressionist film.

M is film that I believe gets even greater after every viewing. It doesnâ??t just tell a great and terrifying story, but the visuals of the film are still as intriguing and mesmerizing as Iâ??m sure they were in 1931. The film is filled with beautiful and compelling images (one of my favorites is in the scene when Peter Lorre looks through a window and in the next shot we the reflection of a girl in a mirror which is surrounded by knives), wonderful performances (especially Peter Lorre), flawless direction by Lang, and it still haunts people to this day.