By ERIC RED
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M
(1931)
Director: Fritz Lang.
Writers: Lang, Thea von Harbou.
Cast: Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke.
Year: 1931
Berlin 1931. A child murderer is
loose in the city. When a citywide police manhunt is unable to apprehend the
monster preying on helpless youngsters, the entire German criminal underworld
organizes to join forces and stop the hideously depraved pervert. On the short
list of the greatest films ever made, this corrosive classic epic thriller is a
perfect film, as enthralling today as when it was made 75 years ago.
The opening
images set the stage with powerful visual storytelling. In an apartment
project, a single mother waits for her child to come home from school. She sets
out dinner. On her way home, her little girl cheerfully bounces her ball as she
meets a shadowy gentleman who buys her a balloon. This is intercut with the
worried mother watching as all the children return to the apartment building but
her own, while the little girl’s plate sits on the table unattended.
We share the
woman’s growing dread as the she calls for her kid over cuts of the empty
staircase, the clock on the wall and the little girl’s empty plate, extending
the terrible wait for her child who will never return. Finally, a shot of the
little girl’s ball rolling to a stop on the grass, then a shot of the released
balloons, caught in high telephone wires, blowing away as the scene fades to
black. It’s not how you show it; it’s how you don’t show it. The horror of the
child murderer is conveyed through a parent’s everyday nightmare, with pure
cinema.
As
Hans Beckert, the child murderer, Peter Lorre creates the screen’s scariest human monster. A squat bug-eyed troll in a rumpled
suit and hat of the bourgeois, he waddles through the streets in the throws of
his unspeakable urges, whistling the predatory classical tune “Peter And The
Wolf” to lure children. In one of
the film’s many masterful touches, his whistle often precedes him, echoing
through the alleys.
On trial by the underworld in the climax, the child
murderer attempts to communicate his mania. “I cannot help what I am!” the
miserable wretch cries. “I can’t escape. Who will know what it is like to be
me?” In the end while the monster is never sympathetic, he achieves an eerie
final dignity and gravitas.For me,
human monsters like Norman Bates in “PSYCHO,” Alex Forrest in “FATAL ATTRACTION”
and John Ryder in “THE HITCHER” have it all over Freddy and Jason, because they
are to some degree real.
I love the
provocative upside down moral universe the film “M” creates, where black is
white and white is black. Because the murder of children is the one crime
abhorrent to all humanity, it unites the dregs of society, the criminals
becoming the law, evil against evil, culminating in a kangaroo court in an
underworld basement where the felons put the fiend on trial. “We are all law
experts here,” says the leader of criminals, listing the combined prison time
those present have served, as the camera passes along the faces of the gathered
felons sitting in judgment of the maniac.
This black
and white film serves as a gritty and documentary-like window into a smoke
filled rooms of bygone world of Berlin before Hitler. The period detail gives
the picture historical fascination and convincing realism. Once the police
dragnet fails and the vast armies of crime unite to catch the child murderer,
“M” becomes an enthralling chase story as the extraordinary inter-coordinated
effort by the underworld closes in on the maniac.
In one great
scene, a small boy pickpocket tracks the child killer by putting a chalk “M” on
his own hand and patting the back of Lorre’s coat, leaving the letter that
identifies the monster to everyone and creates the film’s most famous image.
When the maniac is cornered in a building, the swarms of criminals chisel
through walls and break through doors to capture the trapped Lorre, burrowing
through the structure like rats or termites chewing through the foundations in a
highly filmic metaphor.
Fritz Lang’s
cinematic technique is precise and flawless. Sequences of the child molester
hunting for prey while idly browsing by shop windows makes transgressive use of
subliminal imagery and suggestion…the reflection of a potential child victim on
the street is framed beneath a row of sharp knives…a mechanical toy puppet’s
legs spread and unspread with grotesque inference…a pinwheel whirls
hypnotically. Lang uses
mesmerizing subliminal suggestion to bring us into the feverish horror of the
pederast’s unspeakably twisted psyche and inner hell. As I’ve said, it’s all
showing it without showing it.
“M” was one
of the films that pioneered Film Noir, the famous film style of darkness and
shadow, a literal translation in French of “film of darkness.” Now generally
identified with crime and gangster pictures, Film Noir owes its visual origins
to German expressionist horror films and thrillers like “THE CABINET OF DR.
CALIGARI” and “NOSFERATU” and to the great German filmmakers like Fritz Lang and
Billy Wilder who emigrated to the U.S. under Hitler and began making crime
pictures for the Hollywood studios. Today, “Noir” is a term every young film
fan is familiar with, and films like “M” started it all.
Criterion
puts out the beautiful DVD edition. Love those guys.
READ ERIC RED RECOMMENDS #1 HERE
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