Review of M (1931) by Paul Z — 21 Oct 2008

M was unfortunately caught in the transition between the change in aspect ratio from the silent era to sound, leading to a frame incongruous to any available format from theater to television. It was also during a time when translation for international distribution required entirely re-shooting certain scenes, often with different actors. The German version is the original film directed by Fritz Lang. Be sure that you see the original German version. In 1931, when one's rarely disappointed expectations are to have to look past stagy overacting, glaringly scripted dialogue and an oversimplified script in order to enjoy a movie, Lang created a film that still holds its own today, in terms of style, production values, acting, and social significance.

What is particularly charming about M is its even still unprecedented blend of disturbing film about child murder and a seriously disturbed mind, and a gangland procedural with its tongue half in its cheek due to our scoffs of impressed reaction at their wit and sneaky maneuvers. The film opens with a ring of children playing and chanting a rhyme about a child murderer. This warns of the appearance of a serial killer who preys on children in 1930s Berlin. At the outset, we do not see the face of Peter Lorre, who plays the killer with a riveting self-torture. As in the grand style of the German Expressionist cinema mainly of the silent era, we only see his shadow and images of his body, hearing him whistle an intense melody by Edvard Grieg while he purchases a balloon from a blind man and gives it to a little girl. Lang then cuts to her mother, seeking and calling for her hysterically as we see the balloon floating up into the telephone wires.

Meanwhile, still through definitive montage, but with a fast pace that carries an almost contemporary feel, the police hunt Loree by means of such advanced police procedures as fingerprinting and handwriting analysis. They also raid speakeasies and other crook hangouts, arresting the proverbial usual suspects under the presumptive lack of discernment between gangland crime and serial murder of little children. At the same time as the police work around the clock, the Berlin criminal element grows to be more and more worried about the murder spree. Not only is it troublesome for their dealings to have the police nosing in, but it is offensive to be grouped together in the same ballpark as a child killer. Tight suspense mounts as a race progresses between the police and the criminals to trap the killer, who is totally oblivious to what is materializing.

What is particularly important about M is the moral dilemma Lang's film strikes comparing Lorre's child murderer and the thieves and racketeers. Lorre plays an enormously disturbed sociopath, a victim of his own warped urges. He lurks in the shadows in shame and self-hate, unable to justify his deeds. The gangsters, who maintain honor amongst their underworld, lionize themselves with their dogged pursuit of Lorre, who is a logical tool with which they can justify their lifestyle. We do not reach any conclusions before the film does. M realizes the easy distinction between pure evil and decadent corruption at the same time it refuses to judge one against the other. According to M, they are both social harms and setbacks of the human mind. As M unravels, its twists are stunning albeit not visible. Rather than plot twist, the story elusively unravels altering investments in the characters on our part as the audience. We come to see that Lorre is not the only one who bears some sort of psychological disorder. The difference is that he suffers from it.