| Product: |
M (DVD) |
| Date: |
16/02/01 (36 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: very relevant message and strongly presented moral debate; excellent visual style; a very memorable central performance from Peter Lorre.
Disadvantages: no complete print of the film is now known to exist.
At a time when child-killers and paedophiles receive high profile in the national press, with campaigns such as those by the News of the World which aim to ‘name and shame’ such people provoking fundamental moral debate on a national level, it is comforting, and also slightly surprising, to find a film now 70 years old discussing the various issues of this topic in almost exactly the same ways we are seeing now.
Children are going missing, many of their bodies being found in a dismembered state by the police, who are unable to catch the criminal. The people of the city are growing increasingly unnerved by the continuing murders, and are growing impatient with a heavy-handed and yet ineffective police force; many people are becoming paranoid and accusing others almost at random of being the killer. The situation looks as if it can only get worse.
The local criminals’ union meets and decides that action must be taken; their operations are being severely hampered by the increased police presence on the streets and the police’s tactic of conducting mass searches of properties. The leader of the union proclaims that they, the criminals, will catch the killer. A blind beggar, scouting for the group, recognises the voice of the man he knows to be responsible for murdering one of the previous girls, and so sends an acquaintance over to the man, who transfers the letter ‘M’ (the symbol of Cain) to the man’s back with chalk.
When the mob finally corner the man, named Hans Beckert, in an office block and capture him, they take him to a disused factory and put him on mock trial. Their intention is to kill him, and the killer’s only hope would seem to be if the police arrive on time to ‘rescue’ him.
Fritz Lang is a noted film director who first made his name with silent classics, of which probably the best known today is Metropolis (1926). Many of his earlier films were written with T
hea von Harbou, his wife and a popular writer in her own right, although this arrangement ceased only 3 years after M’s release: Lang was offered the chance to direct propaganda films for the Nazi government and responded by fleeing the country — von Harbou, on the other hand, chose to accept and divorced her husband.
Lang’s career can thus be roughly divided into two major and very distinct sections, the first of which comprises his German silent films, noted for their artistic aspiration (especially in the area of production design) and very powerful vision, whilst the second comprises his later American films, which were possessed of colour and sound and which were, for the most part, much tighter and which represented his voluntary change of personal culture in his adopted homeland of the USA.
M, however, is straddled between the two, being as it is a German picture, in black and white but with sound. This was, in fact, Lang’s first film made with sound, and it shows: Lang uses noise as a child might experiment with a new toy, delighting in long periods of silence followed by sudden cacophonies, and gleefully utilising a distinctive sound, that of a tune whistled by the murderer, as the sign by which the blind beggar recognises the man for whom half the city is searching.
With regard to style, Lang is also still very much influenced by the German Expressionist movement, and although he in no way adheres rigidly to its principles the tendency to replicate environments indoors in order to exercise greater creative control is still very present.
None of these very obvious and deliberate stylistic touches, however, attempt to become a substitute for substance or detract from the film’s central purpose, that of discussion of the nature of crime and punishment. When finally caught, the murderer, played by Peter Lorre, engages the assembled mob of underworld personalities in a moral debate, arguing quite
elegantly that he is not responsible for his actions, that those before him are actually more guilty than he is since they have choice in their actions and still chose to commit whatever crimes it is that have resulted in the underworld status. The one man appointed to Hans Beckert’s defence on the mock ‘trial’ also supports his man, saying that a man with such mental problems should be sent to the doctor rather than the gallows.
Many of these are issues which are still relevant, and still unresolved in general public opinion, to this day. When the case of the killing of James Bulger is discussed, it is always a matter of controversy as to whether the two teenagers who killed him were truly responsible for their actions due to their age. A similar argument is made here on the grounds of mental illness, and both sides argue so vehemently on screen that the only way Fritz Lang, who has effectively written himself into a corner, can resolve the situation is by having the police intercede and take the man away for a real trial. This, whilst being almost an anticlimactic ending, is probably the only way the tale could have concluded and still retain its usefulness, as an indicator that, in such matters of genuine awareness and corresponding responsibility, there can be no clear-cut answers, and that knee-jerk responses, such as those of the underworld in this film and those of the tabloid press today, are rarely helpful.
Stylistically, as I hinted before, this film is very much a product of its time: sound is used as a novelty to be played with, rather than as something absolutely taken for granted as would be the case today; and the actors do not, in my opinion, quite overact — indeed, Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert is outstanding, especially during the final scenes of the film where he is really given a chance to act — but they do show the still near-contemporary nature of the silent film in the time in which this film was
made.
In terms of message, however, this film transcends the decades and stands as relevant as ever, and although a complete print of the film is no longer available, the recent region 2 DVD release of the film, containing “the longest available version”, is most certainly worth purchasing.
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