M (1931 film)

M (German: M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder, lit. M – A City Searches for a Murderer) is a 1931 German thriller film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre in his breakthrough role as Hans Beckert, a serial killer of children. An early example of a procedural drama, the film centers on the manhunt for Lorre’s character, conducted by both the police and the criminal underworld.[2]

M
Theatrical release poster
Directed byFritz Lang
Produced bySeymour Nebenzal
Written byFritz Lang
Thea von Harbou
StarringPeter Lorre
Otto Wernicke
Gustaf Gründgens
CinematographyFritz Arno Wagner
Edited byPaul Falkenberg
Production
company
Distributed byVereinigte Star-Film GmbH
Release date
  • 11 May 1931 (1931-05-11)
Running time
111 minutes[1]
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman

The film’s screenplay was written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou and was the director's first sound film.[3] It features many cinematic innovations, including the use of long, fluid tracking shots, and a musical leitmotif in the form of "In the Hall of the Mountain King"; whistled by Lorre's character. Now considered a timeless classic, the film was deemed by Lang to be his magnum opus.[4][5] It is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, and an indispensable influence on modern crime and thriller fiction.[6][7][8]

Plot

In Berlin,[9] a group of children are playing an elimination game in the courtyard of an apartment building, using a chant about a murderer of children. A woman sets the table for lunch, waiting for her daughter to come home from school. A wanted poster warns of a serial killer preying on children, as anxious parents wait outside a school.

Little Elsie Beckmann leaves school, bouncing a ball on her way home. She is approached by Hans Beckert,[10] who is whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg. He offers to buy her a balloon from a blind street-vendor and walks and talks with her. Elsie's place at the dinner table remains empty, her ball is shown rolling away across a patch of grass and her balloon is lost in the telephone lines overhead.[11]

In the wake of Elsie's disappearance, anxiety runs high among the public. Beckert sends an anonymous letter to the newspapers, taking credit for the murders and promising that he will commit others; the police extract clues from the letter, using the new techniques of fingerprinting and handwriting analysis. Under mounting pressure from city leaders, the police work around the clock. Chief Inspector Karl Lohmann instructs his men to intensify their search and to check the records of recently released psychiatric patients, focusing on any with a history of violence against children. They stage frequent raids to question known criminals, disrupting underworld business so badly that Der Schränker (The Safecracker) calls a meeting of the city's crime lords. They decide to organize their own manhunt, using beggars to watch the children.[12] Meanwhile, the police search Beckert's rented rooms, find evidence that he wrote the letter there, and lie in wait to arrest him.[13]

Beckert sees a young girl in the reflection of a shop window and begins to follow her, but stops when the girl meets her mother. He encounters another girl and befriends her, but the blind vendor recognizes his whistling. The blind man tells one of his friends, who tails the killer with assistance from other beggars he alerts along the way. Afraid that Beckert will get away, one man chalks a large 'M' (for Mörder, "murderer" in German) on his palm, pretends to trip, and bumps into Beckert, marking the back of his overcoat.[13] The girl Beckert has befriended notices the white chalk on his back and offers to clean it for him, but before she finishes, Beckert realizes he is being watched and he flees the scene, abandoning the girl.

Once Beckert realizes that the beggars are following him, he hides inside a large office building just before the workers leave for the evening. The beggars call Der Schränker, who arrives at the building with a team of other criminals. They capture and torture one of the watchmen for information and, after capturing the other two, search the building and catch Beckert in the attic. When one of the watchmen trips the silent alarm, the criminals narrowly escape with their prisoner before the police arrive. Franz, one of the criminals, is left behind in the confusion and captured by the police; Lohmann tricks him into admitting that the gang only broke into the building to find Beckert and revealing where he will be taken.[14]

The criminals drag Beckert to an abandoned distillery to face a kangaroo court. He finds a large, silent crowd awaiting him. Beckert is given a "lawyer", who gamely argues in his defense but fails to win any sympathy from the improvised "jury". Beckert delivers an impassioned monologue, saying that he cannot control his homicidal urges, while the other criminals present break the law by choice, and further questioning why they as criminals believe they have any right to judge him by stating:

What right have you to speak? Criminals! Perhaps you are even proud of yourselves! Proud of being able to crack into safes,[15] or climb into buildings or cheat at cards. All of which, it seems to me, you could just as easily give up, if you had learned something useful, or if you had jobs, or if you were not such lazy pigs. I can not help myself! I have no control over this evil thing that is inside me—the fire, the voices, the torment![16]

Beckert pleads to be handed over to the police, asking: "Who knows what it is like to be me?" His "lawyer" points out that the presiding "judge" is wanted on three counts of manslaughter, and that it is unjust to execute an insane man. Just as the enraged mob is about to kill Beckert, the police arrive to arrest both him and the criminals.

As a panel of judges prepares to deliver a verdict at Beckert's real trial, the mothers of three of his victims weep in the gallery. Elsie's mother says that "No sentence will bring the dead children back" and that "One has to keep closer watch over the children". The screen fades to black as she adds, "All of you".[17]

Cast
  • Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert. M was Lorre's first major starring role, and it boosted his career, even though he was typecast as a villain for years afterward in films such as Mad Love and Crime and Punishment. Before M, Lorre had been mostly a comedic actor. After fleeing from the Nazis, he landed a major role in Alfred Hitchcock's first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), picking up English along the way.[18]
  • Otto Wernicke as Inspector Karl Lohmann. Wernicke made his breakthrough with M after playing many small roles in silent films for over a decade. After his part in M he was in great demand due to the success of the film, including returning to the role of Karl Lohmann in The Testament of Doctor Mabuse, and he played supporting roles for the rest of his career.[19]
  • Gustaf Gründgens as Der Schränker (The Safecracker). Gründgens received acclaim for his role in the film and established a successful career for himself under Nazi rule, ultimately becoming director of the Staatliches Schauspielhaus (National Dramatic Theatre).[20]

Production

Lang placed an advert in a newspaper in 1930 stating that his next film would be Mörder unter uns (Murderer Among Us) and that it was about a child murderer. He immediately began receiving threatening letters in the mail and was also denied a studio space to shoot the film at the Staaken Studios. When Lang confronted the head of Staaken Studio to find out why he was being denied access, the studio head informed Lang that he was a member of the Nazi party and that the party suspected that the film was meant to depict the Nazis.[22] This assumption was based entirely on the film's original title and the Nazi party relented when told the plot.[23]

M was eventually shot in six weeks at a Staaken Zeppelinhalle studio, just outside Berlin. Lang made the film for Nero-Film, rather than with UFA or his own production company. It was produced by Nero studio head Seymour Nebenzal who later produced Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Other titles were given to the film before "M" was chosen; Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (A City searches for a Murderer) and Dein Mörder sieht Dich an (Your Murderer Looks At You).[24] While researching for the film, Lang spent eight days inside a mental institution in Germany and met several child murderers, including Peter Kürten. He used several real criminals as extras in the film and eventually 25 cast members were arrested during the film's shooting.[25] Peter Lorre was cast in the lead role of Hans Beckert, acting for the film during the day and appearing on stage in Valentine Katayev's Squaring the Circle at night.[26]

Lang did not show any acts of violence or deaths of children on screen and later said that by only suggesting violence, he forced "each individual member of the audience to create the gruesome details of the murder according to his personal imagination".[27]

Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert, gazing into a shop window. Fritz Lang uses glass and reflections throughout the film for expressive purposes.

M has been said, by various critics and reviewers,[28] to be based on serial killer Peter Kürten—the Vampire of Düsseldorf—whose crimes took place in the 1920s.[29] Lang denied that he drew from this case, in an interview in 1963 with film historian Gero Gandert; "At the time I decided to use the subject matter of M, there were many serial killers terrorizing Germany—Haarmann, Grossmann, Kürten, Denke, [...]".[30][31] Inspector Karl Lohmann is based on then famous Ernst Gennat, director of the Berlin criminal police.[32]

Leitmotif

M was Lang's first sound film and Lang experimented with the new technology.[33] It has a dense and complex soundtrack, as opposed to the more theatrical "talkies" being released at the time. The soundtrack includes a narrator, sounds occurring off-camera, sounds motivating action and suspenseful moments of silence before sudden noise. Lang was also able to make fewer cuts in the film's editing, since sound effects could now be used to inform the narrative.[34]

The film was one of the first to use a leitmotif, a technique borrowed from opera, associating a tune with Lorre's character, who whistles the tune "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. Later in the film, the mere sound of the song lets the audience know that he is nearby, off-screen. This association of a musical theme with a particular character or situation is now a film staple.[35] Peter Lorre could not whistle and Lang himself is heard in the film.[36]

Release

M premiered in Berlin on 11 May 1931 at the UFA-Palast am Zoo in a version lasting 117 minutes.[26] The original negative is preserved at the Federal Film Archive in a 96-minute version. In 1960, an edited 98-minute version was released. The film was restored in 2000 by the Netherlands Film Museum in collaboration with the Federal Film Archive, the Cinemateque Suisse, Kirsch Media and ZDF/ARTE., with Janus Films releasing the 109-minute version as part of its Criterion Collection using prints from the same period from the Cinemateque Suisse and the Netherlands Film Museum.[37] A complete print of the English version and selected scenes from the French version were included in the 2010 Criterion Collection releases of the film.[38]

The film later was released in the U.S. in April 1933 by Foremco Pictures.[39] After playing in German with English subtitles for two weeks, it was pulled from theaters and replaced by an English-language version. The re-dubbing was directed by Eric Hakim, and Lorre was one of the few cast members to reprise his role in the film.[26] As with many other early talkies from the years 1930–1931, M was partially reshot with actors (including Lorre) performing dialogue in other languages for foreign markets after the German original was completed, apparently without Lang's involvement. An English-language version was filmed and released in 1932 from an edited script with Lorre speaking his own words, his first English part. An edited French version was also released but despite the fact that Lorre spoke French his speaking parts were dubbed.[40] In 2013, a DCP version was released by Kino Lorber and played theatrically in North America[41] in the original aspect ratio of 1.19:1.[42] Critic Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called this the "most-complete-ever version" at 111 minutes.[43] The film was restored by TLEFilms Film Restoration & Preservation Services (Berlin) in association with Archives françaises du film – CNC (Paris) and PostFactory GmbH (Berlin).[44]

Critical reception

Initial response

A Variety review said that the film was "a little too long. Without spoiling the effect—even bettering it—cutting could be done. There are a few repetitions and a few slow scenes."[26] Graham Greene compared the film to "looking through the eye-piece of a microscope, through which the tangled mind is exposed, laid flat on the slide: love and lust; nobility and perversity, hatred of itself and despair jumping at you from the jelly".[27]

Reassessment

In later years, the film received widespread critical praise and holds an approval rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 53 reviews, with an average rating of 9.24/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "A landmark psychological thriller with arresting images, deep thoughts on modern society, and Peter Lorre in his finest performance."[45]

Marc Savlov of Austin Chronicle awarded the film five out of five stars, calling it, "One of the greatest of all German Expressionistic films". Savlov praised the film's cinematography, use of sound, and Lorre's performance.[46] In 1997, critic Roger Ebert added M to his "Great Movies" list. He proposed Lang's limited use of dialogue, in contrast with many early sound films which "felt they had to talk all the time", was a critical factor in the film's enduring success. Ebert also argued the film's characters, nearly all grotesques, embodied Lang's distaste for his homeland: "What I sense is that Lang hated the people around him, hated Nazism, and hated Germany for permitting it."[47]

Legacy

Lang considered M to be his favorite of his own films because of the social criticism in the film. In 1937, he told a reporter that he made the film "to warn mothers about neglecting children".[33] The film has appeared on multiple lists as one of the greatest films ever made. It was voted the best German film of all time with 306 votes in a 1994 poll of 324 film journalists, film critics, filmmakers, and cineastes organized by the Association of German Cinémathèques.[48] It's included in Empire Magazine 's 100 Best Films of World Cinema in 2010.[49] It is listed in the film reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, which says, "Establishing conventions still being used by serial killer movies, Lang and scenarist Thea von Harbou intercut the pathetic life of the murderer with the frenzy of the police investigation into the outrageous crimes, and pay attention to issues of press coverage of the killings, vigilante action, and the political pressure that comes down from the politicians and hinders as much as encourages the police."[50] In 2018, it was voted the thirteenth greatest foreign-language film of all time in BBC's poll of 209 critics in 43 countries.[51]

A scene of the movie was used in the 1940 Nazi propaganda movie The Eternal Jew.[52]

Remakes and adaptations

A Hollywood remake of the same name was released in 1951, shifting the action from Berlin to Los Angeles. Nero Films head Seymour Nebenzal and his son Harold produced the film for Columbia Pictures. Lang had once told a reporter "People ask me why I do not remake M in English. I have no reason to do that. I said all I had to say about that subject in the picture. Now I have other things to say."[25] The remake was directed by Joseph Losey and starred David Wayne in Lorre's role. Losey stated that he had seen M in the early 1930s and watched it again shortly before shooting the remake, but that he "never referred to it. I only consciously repeated one shot. There may have been unconscious repetitions in terms of the atmosphere, of certain sequences."[25] Lang later said that when the remake was released he "had the best reviews of [his] life".[27]

In 2003, M was adapted for radio by Peter Straughan and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 2 February, later re-broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra on 8 October 2016.[53] Directed by Toby Swift, this drama won the Prix Italia for Adapted Drama in 2004.[54]

Jon J. Muth adapted the screenplay into a four part comic book series in 1990, which was reissued as a graphic novel in 2008.[55]

In 2019 a six-episode Austrian-German TV series was released.[56]

See also

References
  1. "M (A)". British Board of Film Classification. 24 May 1932. Archived from the original on 29 May 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2013.
  2. Monsters of Weimar pp. 296–98
  3. "Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep: A Brief History of Child Murder in Cinema". Bloody Disgusting!. Retrieved 19 April 2016.
  4. Reader Archive-Extract: 1997/970808/M
  5. Kauffman, Stanley. "The Mark of M". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 27 April 2012.
  6. "M: In Context". The Cinessential. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  7. "The long shadow of M". The Dissolve. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  8. "A Peerless Classic". @GI_weltweit. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  9. While the location is never mentioned in the film, the dialect used by the characters is characteristic of Berliners, and a police inspector's map labeled "Berlin" and a policeman's order to take suspects to the "Alex", Berlin's central police headquarters on the Alexanderplatz, make the venue clear.
  10. "Fritz Lang's M: the Blueprint for the Serial Killer Movie". bfi.org.uk.
  11. "Fritz Lang's M: the Blueprint for the Serial Killer Movie". bfi.org.uk. 5 December 2016. Retrieved 16 May 2017.
  12. Bradshaw, Peter (4 September 2014). "M review – Fritz Lang's superb thriller fascinates". The Guardian.
  13. Monsters of Weimar p. 297
  14. "M". Archived from the original on 28 September 2017. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  15. "M (1931)". classicartfilms.com. Archived from the original on 12 March 2017. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
  16. Monsters of Weimar p. 298
  17. Garnham, Nicholas (1968). M: a film by Fritz Lang. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. 15–108. ISBN 978-0900855184.
  18. Erickson, Hal. "Biography". Allmovie. Retrieved 14 January 2007.
  19. Staedeli, Thomas. "Otto Wernicke". Cyranos. Retrieved 14 January 2007.
  20. Staedeli, Thomas. "Otto Wernicke". Cyranos. Retrieved 14 January 2007.
  21. Garnham. p. 13.
  22. Jensen, Paul M. The Cinema of Fritz Lang. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. 1969. ISBN 0498074153, 978-0498074158. p. 93
  23. Wakeman, John. World Film Directors, Volume 1. New York: H.W. Wilson Company. 1987. ISBN 0824207572. p. 614.
  24. Jensen. p. 93
  25. Jensen. p. 94.
  26. Jensen. p. 93.
  27. Wakeman. p. 615.
  28. Ramsland, Katherine. "Court TV Crime Library Serial Killers Movies". Crime Library. Archived from the original on 3 November 2006. Retrieved 28 October 2006.
  29. Morris, Gary. "A Textbook Classic Restored to Perfection". Bright Lights. Retrieved 12 January 2007.
  30. "Fritz Lang on M: An Interview", in Fritz Lang: M – Protokoll, Marion von Schröder Verlag, Hamburg 1963, reprinted in the Criterion Collection booklet.
  31. Monsters of Weimar p. 293
  32. Kempe, Frank: “Buddha vom Alexanderplatz“, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 21 August 2014 (in German).
  33. Jensen. p. 95.
  34. Jensen. p. 103.
  35. Costantini, Gustavo. "Leitmotif revisited". Filmsound. Archived from the original on 21 April 2006. Retrieved 10 May 2006.
  36. Falkenberg, Paul (2004). "Classroom Tapes – M". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 8 August 2007.
  37. M, Janus Films, Criterion Collection, closing credits.
  38. Review of 2010 M Blu-ray/DVD release (region 2) Archived 9 October 2010 at the Wayback Machine, DVD Outsider.co.uk. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
  39. "The Daesseldorf Murders". New York Times. 3 April 1933. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  40. "DVD Extra: Peter Lorre's long-lost English-language debut". New York Post. 4 March 2010. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  41. Erik McLanahan (9 April 2013). "Fritz Lang's 'M' is a great entertainment, but it's also a genre mashup". Oregon Artswatch. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  42. "M (Thursday 9PM)". The Charles Theater [Baltimore, Maryland]. Archived from the original on 20 May 2014. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  43. Kenneth Turan (9 April 2013). "Critic's Choice: 'M' stands for masterpiece". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  44. "M". Kino Lorber. Archived from the original on 16 July 2014. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  45. "M (1931)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 22 August 2019.
  46. Savlov, Marc. "M . Austin Chronicle . 12-08-97". Austin Chronicle.cm. Marc Savlov. Archived from the original on 18 October 2019. Retrieved 9 September 2019.
  47. Ebert, Roger (3 August 1997). "M movie review (1931)". RogerEbert.com.
  48. "The 100 Most Important German Films" (PDF). Journal of Film Preservation (54): 41. April 1997. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 June 2015.
  49. "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema: 33. M". Empire.
  50. Schneider 2015, p. 90.
  51. "The 100 greatest foreign-language films". BBC Culture. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
  52. Barnouw, Erik (1993). Documentary: a history of the non-fiction film. Oxford University Press. p. 142. ISBN 978-0-19-507898-5. Retrieved 15 November 2011.
  53. "Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou – M". BBC Radio 4 Extra. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  54. "Prix Italia: Past Editions – Winners 1949–2009" (PDF). Wayback Machine. Prix Italia. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 15 January 2020.
  55. "Fiction Book Review: M: A Graphic Novel by Jon J. Muth, Author, Thea Von Harbou, Screenplay by, Fritz Lang, Adapted by Abrams (189p) ISBN 978-0810995222".
  56. "M – A City Hunts a Murderer". IMDB.com. Retrieved 25 November 2019.

Cited works and further reading
  • Lessing, Theodor (1993) [1925]. Monsters of Weimar: Haarmann, the Story of a Werewolf. London: Nemesis Books. pp. 293–306. ISBN 1897743106.
  • Thomas, Sarah (2012). Peter Lorre, Face Maker: Stardom and Performance Between Hollywood and Europe. United States: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-0857454423.
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