M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Morder (1931) - Video On Demand

M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Morder - Movie Review

M is considered to be Fritz Langs masterpiece work and is certainly the peak of German Expressionism. M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder (M - A Town Is Looking For A Murderer) is a disturbing story of a child murderer who is hunted down and brought to trial by Berlin's criminal underworld.

In M, the abduction and death of a number of young girls by a serial killer Hans Beckert, played by Peter Lorre, has the city living under a shadow of terror that provokes a wave of paranoia and hysteria. The police are keen to do everything in their power to find the murderer and the criminal underworld find their activities disrupted by the increased police activity. The main criminal organisations band together and decide to tackle the problem themselves using the vast network of beggars to monitor any strangers approaching children and eventually do so, branding his coat with the letter 'M' for murderer. In the film's climax, Beckert, facing certain death at the hands of an underworld kangaroo court, makes an impassioned speech declaring that he can't control his violent urges. The monologue ends with the famous line "Who knows what it's like to be me?".  M was based on the real-life case of child-killer Peter Kurten, the "monster of Dusseldorf," whose crimes of the 1920s were still recent enough to resonate in the viewer’s mind at the time of it's release.

A great deal has been said about the fact that this was Fritz Lang's first sound film and his complete mastery of the new medium. Lang used sound as if it were another visual element, editing it freely. Notably is how Lang used the design of sound to overcome space and time issues. Through his use of dialogue over the visuals, time collapses and the audience moves all about the city with greater ease than if he had straight-cut the visuals.  Most important, though, is the sense of doom that colors the film, a fatalism Lang renders through chiaroscuro lighting effects and enormous high-angle shots that suggest a malevolent spiritual presence hovering above the city and guiding its citizens to their doom.

M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Morder - Cast & Crew

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