M (film)

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M

Directed by	Fritz Lang
Produced by	Seymour Nebenzal
Written by	Fritz Lang Thea von Harbou
Starring	Peter Lorre
Distributed by	Vereinigte Star-Film GmbH (Germany) Paramount Pictures (USA)
Release date(s)	May 11 1931 May 3, 1933
Running time	117 min.
Language	German
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

M is a 1931 German crime film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou.

1 Synopsis
2 Links with other works
3 Legacy
4 Notes
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film opens with a circle of young girls playing a game that involves a rhyme about a child murderer. This foreshadows Peter Lorre as a serial killer who preys on children in 1930s Berlin. Initially the audience does not see his face, they merely see his shadow and shots of his body, hearing him whistle "In the Hall of the Mountain King", as he buys a balloon from a blind man and gives it to a little girl. In the next scene her mother searches frantically as the audience sees the balloon flying up into the power lines.

Meantime, the police, under Inspector Karl "Fatty" Lohmann, pursue him using such modern police techniques as fingerprinting and handwriting analysis. They also stage raids and round up all the usual suspects.

As the police do their work, the criminal underworld of Berlin is getting more and more concerned about what's happening. Not only is it bad for business to have the police sniffing around, but they have no interest in being lumped into the same category as a child killer.

Eventually this becomes a race between the police and the criminals to catch the killer, who is completely unaware of what is happening. Eventually, he makes the mistake of whistling again near the same blind balloon salesman. The salesman tells one of the criminals, who tails the killer and, desperate for a way to track him, manages to mark a large letter M onto the killer's coat in chalk.

Now able to track him freely, the criminals pursue him and, after a lengthy search of a warehouse, finally catch the killer, bringing him before a kangaroo court. There he makes an impassioned monologue, saying that he doesn't want to be doing what he does, and that you can't punish a man for being crazy but must instead treat him for his insanity. The monologue ends with the line (delivered by Lorre in a near scream) "Who knows what it's like to be me?"

As the criminals are on the point of killing the murderer, the police arrive, clutching him from their grip.

[edit] Links with other works

It has been claimed that the film is based in part on the story the Vampire of Düsseldorf, Peter Kürten, although Lang denied it.^[1]

M features a "League of Beggars", who also show up in the roughly contemporaneous Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill collaboration The Threepenny Opera and its source The Beggar's Opera.

Lorre's character whistles the tune "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. However, Peter Lorre himself could not whistle - it is actually Fritz Lang who is heard.^[2]

The police inspector Karl "Fatty" Lohmann proved so popular with audiences that he was brought back for Lang's next film, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.

According to the Internet Movie Database, the working title was Die Mörder sind unter uns ("The murderers are among us"), which was changed during production to M. The original title could be interpreted as a stab at German society at the time and the Nazi party. In the film, the criminals actually gang up on Beckert and are close to murdering him themselves, interrupted only by the arrival of the police. The current German title is M: Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder, "M: A City Seeks a Murderer". A different film by Wolfgang Staudte was released in 1946 with the title Die Mörder sind unter uns.

[edit] Legacy

M was the first starring role for Peter Lorre, and it boosted his career, even though he was typecast as a villain for years after.

Lorre's climactic speech was appropriated by Joseph Goebbels for the Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew, a Holocaust apologist film that blames Jews for devaluing German culture with degenerate art. Because Lorre was Jewish, the film uses his final speech as "proof" that Jews exemplify innate criminality, and refuse to take responsibility for their wrongdoings.

Although sound had been used in films for several years before M, the film was one of the first to use a leitmotif, associating the "Hall of the Mountain King" with the Lorre character. Late in the film, the mere sound of the song lets the audience know that he must be nearby, offscreen. This association of a musical theme with a particular character or situation, a technique borrowed from opera, is now a film staple. ^[3]

Although The Maltese Falcon (1941 film) is traditionally credited as the first film noir, the American genre was inspired by earlier European films with dark, stylish cinematography, and in that respect, M anticipated many essential features of the genre.

The movie was remade in Hollywood in 1951 (see M (1951 film)), shifting the action from Berlin to Los Angeles. The remake, directed by Joseph Losey with David Wayne playing Lorre's role, was not well received by critics or audiences.^{[citation needed]}

Today, M consistently ranks among the top 75 of the Internet Movie Database's top 250 films.

[edit] Notes

^ M, Court TV Crime Library Serial Killers Movies. Accessed 28 October 2006.
^ Jonathan Rosenbaum, Fascinating Rhythms, Chicago Reader Movie Review, 1997, accessed online 28 October 2006.
^ Gustavo Costantini, Leitmotif revisited. Accessed 10 April 2006.