M (1931)

Credits: Director...Fritz Lang Writing...Fritz Lang, Egon Jacobson, Thea von Harbou Producer...Seymour Nebenzal Sound...Adolf Jansen Cinematography...Fritz Arno Wagner Editor...Paul Falkenberg

Cast: Peter Lorre...Hans Beckert Ellen Widmann...Madame Beckmann Inge Landgut...Elsie Beckmann Otto Wernicke...Insp. Karl Lohmann Theodor Loos...Police Commissioner Groeber Gustaf Gründgens...Schraenker Friedrich Gnaß...Franz (the burglar) Fritz Odemar...Dynamiter Paul Kemp...Pickpocket with six watches Theo Lingen...Bauernfaenger Rudolf Blümner...Becker’s barrister Georg John...Blind beggar Franz Stein...Minister Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur...Police Chief Gerhard Bienert...Secretary Karl Platen...Nightwatch Rosa Valetti...Elisabeth Winkler (Beckert’s landlady) Hertha von Walther...Prostitute

Background on M

M is reputedly based on the real-life case of child-killer Peter Kürten, the “monster of Dusseldorf,” whose acts terrorized the German public from the late 1920s until his capture in 1930.  Kürten sent two letters to local newspapers that sparked a flood of copycat murders.  Kürten was the perfect example of a serial killer with the exterior of an average citizen. Surviving victims described him as well-dressed, friendly, trust-instilling and respectable. Much of the public hysteria (or fascination) was fueled by the media which, during the height of police investigations, reported “Everything in Vain!  The murderer remains unknown!  He is among us!”  The original title for M was, in fact, Murderer Among Us. 

Terms, Figures, and Concepts to Know this Week

German Expressionism, chiarascuro lighting, low-key lighting, iconographic images, subjective camera, Fritz Lang, auteur theory, émigré filmmakers, Sergei Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl, Abel Gance, the “second” avant-garde, poetic realism in film, Jean Renoir

Elements to look (and listen) for

• the use of subjective sound

• the use of sound as a marker of distance

• the use of intercutting (as opposed to crosscutting)

• the killer’s characteristic whistle

• Expressionistic techniques vs. semi-documentary or realistic techniques

• references to visual technologies

• images of the city

Sequences and Scenes to look for

• opening sequence beginning with an overhead shot of a little girl surrounded by children and ending with a shot of a balloon tangled in wires

• our introduction to Beckert (the murderer) 

• sequences in which Beckert looks at shop windows

• intercut sequences between the police and the underworld

• scene in which the serial killer gets stamped with the “M”

• the “trial” scene at the end

Other notable films by Lang:  Destiny (1921), Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), Metropolis (1927), The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), The Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), Ministry of Fear (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), The Big Heat (1953), While the City Sleeps (1956), The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960). 

Critical Commentary

“[Lang] was one of the few filmmakers of an international repute to make the changeover to sound with no apparent difficulty.  M stands as both a classic film and a great technical achievement in its relating of the soundtrack to the visuals. . . . [His] imaginative use of sound to intensify dread and terror is unparalleled in the history of the talkies.”—Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler

“Through the opposition of the criminals and the police (with an individual caught between), M really embodies the more general contrasts of disorganisation (the police in one sense, the mob in another) and order (the criminals and beggars), justice and revenge, Democracy and Fascism, and perhaps even the Weimar Republic and the Nazi Third Reich.  All of this, however, is subordinate to the film’s quality as a semi-documentary crime melodrama.”—Paul Jensen, The Men  Who Made the Monsters

Discussion Questions

1.  What about M is particularly Expressionistic? On the other hand, what is particularly realistic, even documentary-like?  How, why, and to what affect, does Lang meld these two disparate approaches? 

2. Would you agree with the observation that M lacks an identifiable protagonist? If so, what is the effect of this lack on the story? And on our response to the story? How does this lack of an identifiable protagonist contribute to the film’s themes and concerns?

3.   How does Lang use sound—and silence-- in M?  How does his use of sound affect us as an audience?  In what way does his use of sound relate to the themes of the film?  Why is it important that M contains no musical soundtrack?

4. How is Beckert, the murderer, introduced to us? How is he represented generally in the film? What do you make of Tom Gunning’s comment that “Throughout the film, Beckert plays hide-and-seek with us, appearing, usually indirectly or obliquely, then withdrawing into darkness, the realm of the unseen. The film may well pivot around Beckert, but he is the film’s blind spot, its aporia, rather than its point of coherence.”

5.  Can you find any thematic or stylistic similarities between M and Nosferatu? Explain.

6.  Consider M as a precursor to such films about serial killers as The Silence of the Lambs and Seven (or any film of your choosing).  What formal or stylistic similarities can you find?  Consider the uses of sound and editing, for instance.  Does M thematically correspond to such contemporary crime thrillers?  If so, how?

7. Like D.W. Griffith and F.W. Murnau, Lang uses crosscutting heavily in his films. Can you recall some of the more dramatic uses of crosscutting in M (such as the opening sequence, or the sequences in which the camera switches from the activities of the police to those of the underworld)? What struck you as interesting about these uses? How does Lang use them differently from Griffith? From Murnau?

8. Among the central themes/subjects in Lang’s films are the following:  mob hysteria and violence; the limitations of people’s vision and perception; the disjunction between reality and appearance; the role of the media in shaping public perceptions about crime; the blurred lines between “innocence” and “guilt”; a sympathetic treatment of violent criminals. Single out one of these subjects and discuss its treatment in M.

9. In your reading for this week, David Cook argues that M is “as much about the crisis of German society at the time it was made as about child-murder.” What do you think he means by this? What constitutes this crisis? Consider, for example, the film’s various references to poverty, prostitution, single parenthood, the inefficiency of the police, and hunger. 

10. Like Traffic in Souls, one of M’s main interests is in the representation of the city. With what characteristics is the city associated in M?  do you agree with one critic who argues that the city functions as a kind of character in the film?