M

M

By Lang

                       

One of the most memorable facts about this most memorable German film is not communicated by the film’s surface proper.  The fact that I refer to is curiously German and very relevant to M’s theme. When director Fritz Lang announced M’s production in 1930, its proposed title was Murderer Among Us. Immediately upon this announcement Lang received threatening letters, incomprehensible to him and was refused permission to make use of the film studio. Only when he glimpsed at a Nazi badge under the lapel of the studio official to whom he was protesting, did Lang solve this mystery. The Nazi party imagined that they would be compromised by the title of this film, this film about a actual child murderer!

When Lang agreed to change the title, he was free to use the studio without difficulty. And better for it, a title of such simplicity, an image of such magnitude all brought forth with a single letter. M, released in 1931 stands as one of Lang’s finest films, undoubtedly one of the finest films ever made. I would argue Lang’s masterpiece.

Political guilt has never been depicted in film this raw, this egregious, so psychologically persecuting. This guilt correlates to the German soul circa 1930; a soul bound by will, will to face sin, crime and yes, guilt. To carry the contest with them to an ultimate issue, one regardless of consequences.  In his breakdown before a court comprised by hounds of the underworld; Peter Lorre’s child killer , simply referred to in script as “M” is judged by eyes more than acquainted with guilt. Unflinching in their decision, the criminals have proven to be better hunters than the police. Lorre’s rendering of a man who is incapable of not committing evil as of not suffering from committing it. Lorre gives us a character who is so very sad, so sympathetic, a character who for all intensive purposes should not be. “M” has committed these atrocities, the systematic killing of children and has been captured, is being judged for these crimes and yet, in his breakdown, he grabs the audience. He grabs the audience that is not hardened by crime unlike the jury in Lang’s film, a jury that run the underworld and live in the unseen Germany, mobsters and beggars. Where use of melodrama and Lorre’s marvelous acting penetrates the heart of some audience members, it doesn't others. This is Lang’s greatest feat in M, dividing the audience. He deadlocks us, we hate the crimes that the murderer has committed, we fear men like him and pray for the children he would prey on. The film is deliberate in its grave rhythm, Lang makes us really soak up the killings. And yet, it is this moment that makes us consider it all; a man falling to his knees, talking of compulsion, of a magnetic need to kill.

By doing this, he makes M a conversation point, he makes M a piece of Germanic and cinema culture, he makes us ponder what drives men and women to commit acts of true evil and above all else; he sheds the idea of cartoonish villainy by having Lorre collapse, weeping and pleading in what can only be categorized as unbridled humanity. Where the ideals of Germany point to the will, it’s triumph and it’s resolve, Lorre shows that as a German that is all false. He is so instantly humanized that upon first viewing I found the scene baffling among a number of things.

I’m fixated on this scene more than anything else, simply because the film is a culmination to this underworld court case. Public alarm rises at a steady pace, feelings are wildly different but universal in theory.

Lang’s breathtaking pace, his depiction of 30’s Germany, M’s great successes throughout culminating in the film’s fantastic denouement. A filmic feat in a seemingly endless number of ways, M is visually engaging, Lang’s camera is slow and almost cautious, use of space is melodramatic, sound is almost muffled at times. The shot of the empty streets during the manhunt as different mobsters are converging on the killer’s location, the streets go from empty to teeming with violent masses. All the while, “M” is hiding in a storage closet, as we anticipate his capture, Lang puts him in the protagonist role, he makes the scene so very tense and plays with our perception. Where you should be rooting for the mob and the beggars, we find ourselves possibly fearing for “M”. “M” is very much a child killer, but he is a child killer in agony. This bid for empathy is so powerful and Lorre plays the role perfectly. After ‘M’ Lorre’s career was made.