Fritz Lang’s silent epics of intrigue and iniquity had all but invented the crime genre on film, and with M he laid the blueprint for every serial killer film that followed in its wake. While the opening scenes – when a schoolgirl is ominously presented with a balloon by a stranger in silhouette – create an atmosphere of dread, daringly the director later establishes the killer Hans Beckert as a figure of pathos.

Lang is more concerned with a clinical examination of the cross-section of Berlin society – the politicians, the businessmen, the organised criminals – whose self-serving interests are compromised by Beckert’s freedom. Lorre’s creepy, bulging-eyed performance as the killer who can’t help himself quickly attracted the attention of Hollywood, where he made a career playing sinister desperados.

“The greatest of the early talkies.” Andreas Kilb

“M is a dark symphony about Berlin at the dawn of the 20s. A whole era is reflected on the face of one man – a man suffering from “a social evil”, as Lang would say. Hans Beckert, the character played by Peter Lorre, meets the fury of the crowd; they are about to lynch him. But Lang is always on the side of those who try to understand human behaviour.” Miquel Escudero Diéguez

“A film that interrogates the complex, ambiguous nature of the human soul and notions of law and justice, with a mise en scène of rare stylistic perfection that combines German expressionism with the absolute power of offscreen and sound.” Giulio Casadei

“A lively, important work from the early sound era, its ingenious use of audio technique is still worth examining today.” Zhang Ling

Film	Year	Director
Vertigo	1958	Alfred Hitchcock
Ordet	1955	Carl Th. Dreyer
A Man Escaped	1956	Robert Bresson
Nattvardsgästerna	1962	Ingmar Bergman
INGEBORG HOLM	1913	Victor Sjöström
Tokyo Story	1953	Yasujirō Ozu
La Chute de la maison Usher	1928	Jean Epstein
M	1931	Fritz Lang
Visite au Louvre (Visit to the Louvre)	2004	Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet
Prénom Carmen	1983	Jean-Luc Godard

Jan Holmberg

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