Famed German director Fritz Lang’s first talkie, M, is a meditative examination of the criminal mind and how society reacts to it as the filmmaker unabashedly presents the subconscious acknowledgement of a nation facing the upcoming social upheaval at the hands of the National Socialists. Fascinatingly, Lang combines these two themes in such an articulate, artful method that it upends the viewer’s expectations as it culminates in a grand narrative of almost epic scope and proportion.
A child murder has recently killed his ninth victim in an eight-month period. As mass paranoia gives way to mass hysteria, the authorities begin an intense city-wide investigation, the consequence of which threatens to become a tyrannical police state. As a result, the local mob–seeing that the law enforcement’s efforts might very well unveil more than the killer’s identity–opt to locate the killer itself.
Lang’s M is arguably best known for it semi-ambiguous finale in which the killer, Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre), pleads to the kangaroo court comprised of the criminal underworld that he is unable to control his murderous urges. We can concur with this sentiment, having watched Beckert’s anguish as his murderous impulse arose while watching a little girl lieu of a city-wide manhunt. However, after the murderer makes this claim, the makeshift judge, Schränker (Gustaf Gründgens), utters in disgust that the accused is issuing the same tired justification–insanity–which, if such a plea where offered to the police, it would permit Beckert the opportunity to escape into a mental institution or even be formally released back into society. To compound Lang’s presentation, the mother of one of the slain states that if Beckert is killed, it will nonetheless do nothing but create–in her eyes–another murder, the justice of killing a killer not housing the ability to right the wrong, that is, bring her child back.
This is the trademark complexity of German director Fritz Lang. Unlike so many directors who use celluloid to heavy-handedly preach upon their cinematic soapbox, Lang attempts to merely present society in all its convoluted complexity.
However, outside of the philosophical meditation upon social psychology and the death penalty, M unapologetically presents a Germany in decline, the director obviously fearful of the mounting strength that the Nazis were accumulating and integrating in his native land during the time. The film opens in the slums before progressing through the dirty, disconcerted city, its inhabits literally littered with prostitutes, criminals, trigger-happy police, and a hysterical, demanding laypeople. Predictably, once the killer strikes again, the people’s anxiety gives way to hysteria as the authorities instigate a tyrannical manhunt resulting in the formation of a police state. As a consequence, and perhaps most poignantly than another any director since, Lang critiques the confused, trite efforts of the police by having the criminal underworld, fearful that during the search for the killer that it will be revealed, create a search party (the efforts of both factions are juxtaposed/paralleled in that Lang cuts between their discussions for the suspect’s allocation) which ultimately locates the child killer. The masterstroke of having Beckert apprehended by the criminal element as opposed to the police is not that it serves as a criticism of society at the time but that the anxiety felt by the viewer isn’t due to the threat of the killer in pursuit of his next victim, but by the authoritarian efforts of the police as they become all the more constrictive the longer the killer remains at large.
Also of note is the characterization of Beckert, a composite of Peter Kuerten, the notorious child molester and killer also known as The Vampire of Düsseldorf, and Jack the Ripper. Interestingly, as Beckert writes to the press, noting that the police refuse to acknowledge his communications with him, he misspells several words, thus Lang adds to the character’s profile, not that he is a sadistic, meticulous killer, but a person lacking an education who is merely attempting to reach out to others. Furthermore, M houses one of the most effective instances of a leitmotif as Beckert’s persistent nervous habit of whistling Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” signals the character’s presence. This is complimented by the theme of mirrors alongside the character as we watch as Beckert attempts to stretch his face, hoping to find the antagonist contained within, which the people moving around him are likewise trying to locate. Lastly, the film presents one of the earliest cinematic investigations utilizing a crime lab.
Fritz Lang’s ability and willingness to merely present a scenario, thus permitting the viewer to pass judgment without the impediment of the director’s omnipotent finger pointing the way, finds apt expression once more in M. Though he presents Germany in less than sympathetic light, he does not permit such condemnation to influence the crux of his narrative. Instead, the allows his concurrent themes to parallel one another, thereby highlighting the magnitude of the events being depicted. In relation to other serial killer films within the genre, M stands as one of the most effective, thought-provoking works of all time.
-Egregious Gurnow
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