Review of M (1931) by Ben L — 18 May 2016

In my continued journey of exploration through the films of Fritz Lang, I'm once again shown that he was ridiculously ahead of his time with the story-telling. In this movie, one of Lang's first talkies, the plot revolves around a series of child murders.

As children keep getting killed the city goes on high alert, and everyone joins in the fight to track down the man responsible. M has so many things going for it, beyond a truly engaging script. The visuals are marvelous, because Lang plays with light and shadows, and therefore evokes emotion nearly as strong as any line of dialogue could muster.

Peter Lorre is pure genius as the killer (it's not really a mystery to us as the audience, so I'm not afraid of spoilers.) His delivery of a speech in the final act is devastatingly good, and makes you actually pity him.

Keep in mind he pulled this off for me despite the fact that I had to read subtitles to understand the speech (the film is in German.) The story is crafted very well, and it is truly timeless. You could remake this exact same film changing only minor details and it would still make sense as a movie taking place in 2016.

There were some strange parts where the audio cuts out completely. I think this might be a symptom of the fact that the talkie technology was still somewhat new, so they had trouble capturing audio on some of the wider shots, and didn't know how to splice in music.

I just wish they could have filled with some kind of score to make those silent moments stand out less. The other disappointment with M was the very end of the film. It kind of closes with a whimper, trying to tack on a moral which didn't need to be there.

However, the movie as a whole was wonderful, and deserves to get some recognition for how it pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable at the time, and challenged audiences to think introspectively.