Fritz LangM - Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder (1931)

This film is nothing less than a masterpiece.
It is a highly structured and stylized film about a serial killer.
It created the serial kill genre, which includes such entries as Psycho and Silence of the Lambs.
Alfred Hitchcock (the director of Psycho) was a disciple of Lang as were Jacques Tourneur (The Leopard Man (1943)) and Michael Powell (Peeping Tom (1960)).
M was not only the originator of the genre, but arguably remains it preeminent entry.

Highly recommended for those in the mood for a Hitchcockian-style thriller with a great performance by Peter Lorre and great story-telling technique by Fritz Lang

This item is part of the collection: Feature Films

Director: Fritz Lang
Producer: Seymour Nebenzal
Production Company: Nero-Film GmbH (Berlin)
Audio/Visual: sound, black & white
Language: German with English subtitles
Keywords: Thriller; Fritz Lang; German Expressionism
Contact Information: www.k-otic.com

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: bestpbx - - May 8, 2008
Subject: Unusual camera use SPOILER WARNING!

There is a lot of the story that needs no dialogue. The different shots the camera uses to show us the child is missing are frightening and poignant at the same time... the child's plate and silverware sitting at the dinner table un-used, the empty stairwell, the empty basement, and then that pityful little balloon floating away.
One camera angle that was amazing was when the investigator is on the phone at one point and the camera looks up at him from the floor... you can see his fat belly.
Lorre's performance is good. He is so young! His part must have been very hard to agree to do. There are not many actors who would agree to play a part like this for fear of the public taking a permanent dislike to them.

Reviewer: dedmon - - March 8, 2008
Subject: souns like "M"

The one thing that stands out the most to me about Fritz Langs M is its absence of a music score. Other than a gong like sound at the very beginning of the film, there is no other musical accompaniment. Another quality of the film that stands out to me is that all of the sounds and noises, including the voices of the actors, have an abrupt piercing quality about them. Its as if they had the recording levels on the audio turned up to high. You can hear every noise in the shots, even the rustle the actors clothing as they move about the set. A few reasons for the quality of this films sound come to mind. Perhaps, one reason may be that M is one of the first films with sound, and film makers of this era had not mastered the art of recording audio for their films yet. Another reason could be the lack of musical accompaniment. Without the mood music in the background, ones ear is much more sensitive to the other sounds in the film. M would probably be hard to sit through for most modern movie goers because without the music score guiding their emotions they may not know how to react to the different scenes and the tone of each. In my opinion the absence of music adds to this films realism and gives it a much eerier quality. In defense of the actors voices; perhaps, a German watching this film would not perceive the actors voices as harsh and shrill as my English accustomed ears.

M has a very film-noir quality about it, with its mood altering use of shadows and light. There also seems to be a very Hitchcockian feel to this film, with its strange yet stylish camera angles. Lang successfully depicts the darkly perverse world of a child murder without the blood, gore and special effects used in modern films of its genre. it would interesting to hear this film scored by archive's own "NoiseCollector". NoiseCollector tracks can be downloaded from archive under audio.

Reviewer: Nicolas J. - - October 29, 2007
Subject: The other way round

Hitchcock may have been inspired by Lang, but his 1926's masterpiece "The Lodger" is amazingly close to what Lang would do 5 years later in "M". So it may well be that in fact, it is Fritz Lang who has been inspired by the early genius of Hitchcock.

Reviewer: nobody0815 - - August 26, 2007
Subject: nice film, odd subtitles

I enjoyed watching this. But the english subtitles are often not very accurate to the german dialogue.

Reviewer: Maquiavel - - February 27, 2007
Subject: Download

How can I download this movie to my computer?

Reviewer: boffy_b - - February 16, 2006
Subject: Audio

Going by the quality, this appears to be taken from a PAL DVD, which often have AC3 audio.
Those not hearing any sound should get AC3filter[1], this will sort the audio in pretty much any windows player.
It also plays perfectly in VLC[2]

The picture quality is very good apart from the odd jump, and the sound is free of noise. It is a little tinny, but this is such an early talkie that it was probably the same at the time.

[1] http://www.free-codecs.com/download/AC3_Filter.htm
-or-
http://ac3filter.sourceforge.net

[2] http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Reviewer: Danial - - February 8, 2006
Subject: M.

A very well done movie. I thank those who made it possible for us to see again.

Reviewer: Nqe - - January 2, 2006
Subject: Best Lang Film ever

A masterpiece beyond belief, too bad my downloading capebilities are a bit slow.

ps: to "MrMovie" if you think correctly, "M" is a german film, so why should it be downgraded to a lesser format such as NTSC. And why is it that i do have sound on my MPEG2, PAL rocks!!!

Reviewer: manavkaushik - - December 20, 2005
Subject: More than Five Stars

In this first sound motion picture, M, Fritz Lang constructs a shadowy, ominous background, arresting the film's fright through the deep darkness, through the faltering, whistled replication of a motif from Grieg's Peer Gynt, and through the every day details his camera converges on while terrible things are occurring out of frame. Preserving the macabre particulars of the child murders in many senses indicts the audience, concerning their thoughts of what is happening and thus dispersing the culpability and terror of the film's anti-hero, Hans Beckert. M has had a incredible cinematic influence, on thrillers, on the genre of film noir, and on portraits of psychosis, but the film was almost quashed by Nazi authorities, as they did not care for the implications of its original title, Murders Among Us. After all, while the storyline of M draws its roots from real-life child murderer Peter Krten, "the monster of Dusseldorf," Lang's most savage indictment is reserved for the mob thinking whipped up by the indistinguishable corrupt police and organized criminals. Lang's figurative condemnation of fascist mobs prompted Nazi death threats, and, eventually, Lang immigrated to America to continue his film career. While M may be docile by today's thriller standards, its dismal depiction of the gamut of cruel mentalities remains as dangerous and recent today as it did upon its release.

This is certainly a masterpiece of low-keyed expressionism, in which fear permeates every brick of the dark alleys and crumbling buildings which form its background. Direction is great, cinematography is superb and performances leave great impact.

Manavkaushik at hotmail.

Reviewer: repete86 - - December 16, 2005
Subject: Quite possibly the single greatest film ever made!

After seeing this, all I can think is "wow." I'll say it again. "WOW!" Impeccably directed by Fritz Lang, and starring a young and plump Peter Lorre, M is perhaps the single greatest film I have ever seen. Lang created two film genres with this one film: Film-Noir, and the Crime/Psychological Thriller. The origins of Film-Noir can clearly be seen in this, as are the remaining traces of German Expressionism, brought about by the director that helped pioneer both movements.

M is about the search for a child murderer in Berlin, and as the story, and the search progress, the high profile murderer begins to inhibit the lives of everyone from the Police, to the criminals, to innocent bystanders who are accused of being the murderer for even the slightest contact with any child.

The most startling thing about this film is it's use of sound. M was Germany's first talkie, and is evident by the primitive sound recording. Characters can often be just barely heard (thank God for the subtitles), but regardless of the limitations of the technology in the medium, the use of sound is advanced even by today's standards. This film featured the first scene where two different parties are talking about the same thing, and the conversation is continued between the two groups (for the dramatic touch, the two parties were the Police, and the Criminals both intent on finding the murderer to save their reputation). It was also the first talkie to have a person heard off screen while an image unrelated to the dialog is displayed on screen (as seen early in the movie when Mrs. Beckman is heard calling for her child Elsie while an empty attic, an empty chair, and an empty stairway are shown). While Lang used sound heavily to enhance the mood and feel of his film, he also went without it (complete dead silence) on occasion to increase tension and create a paranoid mood.

Other cool tricks used by the Fritz Lang include heavy use of shadows (largely in the style of the yet to come Film-Noir genre), and the use of setting to create darker moods (evidence that Lang was at the head of the German Expressionist movement).

This is a must see film. Without this film we would probably not have the modern psychological/crime thrillers like Silence of the Lambs, and Se7en.

10/10

Reviewer: docfranken - - December 12, 2005
Subject: M - for Murder

For shure one of the best movies I have ever seen. I would like to see "´Metropolis" - it was before and ruined the production company (30 Million Goldmark production costs).

As far as I know in "M" You can hear the director himself whisheling the famous theme from Edward Grieg because Peter Lorre could not do the job.

I try to download the movie for art least 2 weeks - all the time my computer collapses and I have to restart.... Does anyone have a save download adress???

thankx

Reviewer: bearpuf - - December 9, 2005
Subject: What A Treat !

I saw M some 30 years ago when it ran on public television. The prophetic beginning stuck in my head for all these years along with Lorre's haunting facial expressions. It's great to not only be able to see it again but have it be seen on a good quality print as well. Thank you to Rick and all the staff who make this possible.
Referring to Mrmovie's review of 12/9/05 there is excellent sound quality on the MPEG 2 movie, even if I have trouble understanding German.

Reviewer: MrMovie - - December 9, 2005
Subject: FILM IS IN PAL SYSTEM

Please NOTE this film is in the PAL System & The MPEG 2 AUDIO FILE CONTAINS NO SOUND.

Reviewer: max_von_mayerling - - December 7, 2005
Subject: M for MODERN...

The guy from Pittsburgh wanted art to be modern. I think he meant that art shouldn't be a museum piece, or if it was it had to be taken out of the museum to move people here and now. This movie is over 70 years old but it feels modern to me the way Shakespeare's plays do when they're properly performed. It's very moving.

It's also intensely moral. The underworld gangsters who share the city (rather unevenly) with the establishment insist that they're not on the same level as the child-killer. I think this is one of the principal theses that the movie explores. In bathetic scenes over-fed citizens guiltily accuse one another of being the killer. I think all the appetitive behavior in such scenes, which makes the characters resemble guilty swine, resonates with the killer's worse appetite for children.

The point might be that we're driven by appetite. We can only be grateful that our appetites don't make us even worse swine than we already are.

The gangsters behave differently. There'd be no point in their melodramatically denouncing one another, since they already know they're killers. Since they at least know they're swine, they have one up on the establishment. They can get down to business a lot faster. For them the child-killings are principally that bad business. "We are doing our job. We have to make a living," says crime boss Schranker.

The movie satirizes the pomposity of the establishment and its self-styled "experts." For example a graphologist, on the basis of the killer's letter, concludes that he has "an actor's personality" - probably one of Lang's digs at the movie business and artists in general (there are quite a few in Scarlet Street). The killer narcissistically primps in front of his mirror, looking by turns lazy and insane, according to the expert's commentary. Maybe they read the same text-book? Other "experts" examine candy wrappers. I think we're meant to feel that this is a waste of time.

A long passage relating the strenuous efforts of the establishment, narrated by one of its one officials, provides a comic foil for the more effective efforts of the underworld later on. If instead of raiding underworld hangouts and arresting the inhabitants, the authorities had talked to them, they might have caught the killer themselves -- and a lot sooner. The one good effect of such measures is that they spur the underworld into action, to find the killer and restore order.

The pace quickens as the camera cuts back and forth in point-counterpoint between establishment and underworld, the underworld showing itself capable of thwarting whatever the establishment proposes. Both elements of the city want the same thing, but they initially waste a lot of energy fighting each other. The establishment is characteristically the worst at this, alienating the best sources of information.

All of this social analysis is true to life, if that's a criterion. Which it should be, unless movies are just for children. One needs only to think of the way the U.S. government consulted people luck Lucky Luciano during WWII - Luciano was in jail but he still knew more about what was going on than anybody else. This sort of intelligence is part of what makes the movie feel "modern" - maybe stupidity is always a little out of date. I would like to think so. Consider how rarely one gets this sort of clarity I suppose you'd have to look for some scenes in The Godfather for the equivalent.

I don't want to make the movie sound like a social studies paper. The movie is totally cinematic, not like (for an obvious example) some Chaplin pictures in which the moralizing is always close to the surface, and the director more or less walks up to his own camera and makes a little speech. My reaction is to feel sorry that Chaplin lived in such a bad time and that he wasn't strong enough to keep it from spoiling his art. Such isn't the case with Lang and "M."

Everything works here, is at once controlled and full of emotion. For example, it's hard to believe that this is the first time Lang used sound. What one hears is almost as effective as what one sees. The sound track establishes a rhythm - clocks striking, cars honking, the little girl's ball bouncing - broken by silence when (almost simultaneously) the ball strikes the wanted poster, Lorre casts his shadow upon it, and the girl is abducted. The mother earlier remarked that "If they're singing, at least we know they're alive." Now her voice searches with the camera, down empty staircases, into empty rooms. The silence becomes the aural corollary of emptiness, loss and death. It all works together.

The way the aural and the visual work together is at once technique, device, and theme. Lorre is as marked by the menacing tune his whistles as by the some denizen chalks on his shoulder after he has been identified by a blind man. The two media, working together, "mark" the killer and enable his arrest.

Lorre is great in this, as everyone knows. If he seems formulaic or cliche (he doesn't, at least not to me) it's probably because every subsequent portrayal of a tormented villain just imitates his. There's nothing like the original.

I suppose few actors ever have a scene prepared for them this well, but Lorre rises to the occasion. Lorre's monologue encapsulates the whole movie, but it too goes hand in glove with sight.

That many of the crooks assembled around the killer agree with him is obvious from their faces. That it won't make any difference to the outcome is equally apparent. The arguments that might exculpate a killer in the rest of society, or at least get him as opposed to the death sentence, here will get him killed for sure. Does he deserve it? Who knows? There is dark humor to the killer's genuine indignation at being tried by a bunch of bums, that they'll kill him "in cold blood" the way he likes to kill little girls. He parodies the crime bosses' snobbishness. No, they are not like him. Or rather, from the killer's perspective, he is not like them. They kill for money, he kills from compulsion. They are criminal, but he is ill. I'm not sure that we're meant to buy this, or that it's consistent with what the movie reveals. I return to what I think could be the position of the movie, that everyone is equally driven, the victim of his genes, his appetites, his humanity - call it what you will. This consistent with the way characters are almost always eating, smoking, drinking - indulging in some vice. Even the beggar pursuing Lorre pauses for moment to pick up his discarded cigarette butt. He takes a long drag from it, not minding where it's been. There are many moments like this. I think it was the great Russian critic Bakhtin who called such things carnivalesque. They're references to our basic (base?) humanity which serve to undermine the pretensions of official discourse. Here I think they mean that for all our moralizing we're all just animals. We can't help what we do. Most of us are as driven to be normal as a few of us to be abnormal. A few of these are driven to do evil. No one is virtuous. Maybe some deserve more compassion than others. Maybe some deserve punishment, but that doesn't seem to be the main issue, or the way the issue is phrased. We never hear the killer's sentence. As the crime boss puts it, "We just want to render you harmless" (which means killing him) . The last word goes to the grieving mothers: "This won't bring back our children. We, too, should keep a closer watch on our children

As with a novel by Dostoyevsky, other viewers could come up with a totally different interpretation, and still (of course) admire the movie. All sorts of people have admired, and continue to admire, Lang's work. Hitler loved the earlier Metropolis, but when (according to legend, recounted as fact in Katz's book) Goebbels offered Lang a job as supervisor of Nazi propaganda filsm, Lang immediately fled for his life. His life was remarkable. His sympathetic portrayals of street people could have something to do with him having been a street artist (bum) in Paris before WWI. He was a man who got around.

Lang gets one of the longest entries in Katz's monumental Encylcopaedia. A really great book, not just by the way that I got for 50 cents at some thrift store. Lang's right up there at the top. If The Big Heat (1953) is typical, he never declined.

Here's the last sentence or two from Katz's entry. And many thanks to the directors of the archive for posting M here. If the number of downloads is any indication (and it must be), there's a great appetite for quality out there:

"Fritz Lang brought to the screen a vision of a world largely populated by criminals, psychopaths, prostitutes, and maladjusted personalities, a deterministic world ruled by the inevitability of fate. It wasn't, however, his fascination with the psychology of violence, but the fascinating visual means he chose to express it that made hyim one of the creative giants in the history of both the German and American cinema" (The Film Encyclopaedia, P. 67).

Reviewer: moxey - - December 2, 2005
Subject: Lorre

great, great film.
the tune Lorre whistles just makes his character one of the creepiest on film.

Reviewer: spackofatz - - December 2, 2005
Subject: Lorre

Lorre is a great actor. His pleading at the end of this movie (right in front of the judge Gustaf Grndgens) is one of the great monologs of this era.
The perspective changes totally... The kindermrder show the public his motives and demands justice.

Reviewer: Yodelling Llama - - November 30, 2005
Subject: Atmospheric.

The simple story of a man who murders children and the urbanites who react. Dark and remarkable atmosphere. Lorre brings to life a truly frightening creature.

Reviewer: ranXerox - - November 30, 2005
Subject: Chilling

Art.