#CinemaRevival
M
by Fritz Lang
Made in 1931, near the end of the Weimar Republic, ‘M’ is Lang’s brilliant link between silent film and talkies, and between German Expressionism and what would eventually be called Film Noir. It tells the story of a Berlin society caught up in hysteria over a series of child murders, and of the massive mobilisation — by police and criminals alike — to catch the killer.
The Hungarian actor Peter Lorre plays Hans Beckert, the mentally disturbed murderer. Lorre worked on the film in the daytime while performing onstage in Bertolt Brecht’s production of ‘Mann ist Mann’ in the evenings. His striking performance in ‘M’ would catapult him to international stardom.
REASONS TO WATCH
– In Germany, the Nazis banned the movie in July 1934. Peter Lorre was Jewish and fled Germany in fear of Nazi persecution shortly after the movie’s release. Fritz Lang, who was half Jewish, fled two years later.
– The film was independently backed by an admirer of Fritz Lang who persuaded him to make another film when the director was thinking of giving it all up. Lang eventually agreed to make the film provided that he had no interference and had final cut.
– The use of voiceover narration was a groundbreaking new technique at the time.
– Fritz Lang’s first sound film. Two-thirds of the film was shot with sound, the remaining third was shot silent. At the time the license fees for sound equipment were quite prohibitive, so this was a move to try to keep costs down. However, Fritz Lang liked the eerie, unnerving quality that arose from going from a sound world to one where there is no noise at all.
– Chosen by the Association of German Cinémathèques as the most important German film of all time, included on Roger Ebert’s ‘Great Movies’ list, among the ‘1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die’, and voted as one of ‘The 25 Most Dangerous Movies’ by Premiere.
– Fritz Lang asserted that he cast real criminals for the court scene in the end. According to biographer Paul Jensen, 24 cast members were arrested during filming.
NOTES
The film is supposedly based on the real-life case of serial killer Peter Kürten, called ‘The Vampire of Düsseldorf’, whose crimes in the 1920s horrified Germany. However, director Fritz Lang has expressly denied that he drew any inspiration from the case. Nevertheless, he and his wife Thea von Harbou researched the crimes carefully, consulting with German police, visiting murder scenes, interviewing sex offenders in prison and even talking to detectives in Scotland Yard in London. According to Lang biographer Paul Jensen, the director spent eight days doing field research in a mental institution.
The film premiered in 1931. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party took power in 1933, and banned the film the next year. It was then stored in a vault, where it stayed for many years. Audiences didn’t get the chance to see the film again until 1966. For its video release 30 years later, it underwent a restoration that included the addition of music and sound effects that wouldn’t have been authorised by Fritz Lang (he deliberately kept certain passages quiet) and the cutting of certain scenes. The image had also been altered to fit the 4:3 screen size. These injustices were amended in 2009 for the film’s Blu-ray release.