M directed by Fritz Lang (1931) was a recent treat enjoyed at the NFT/BFI Southbank.
A major highpoint in film is M. M for Murderer (or Monster) it is in essence a serial killer movie, and was shown as part of a month-long 'Psycho in Context' season. The season represents a filmic family tree for the Hitchcock movie; M has the family role perhaps of an elderly, stylishly disturbing great uncle.
A major highpoint in film is M. M for Murderer (or Monster) it is in essence a serial killer movie, and was shown as part of a month-long 'Psycho in Context' season. The season represents a filmic family tree for the Hitchcock movie; M has the family role perhaps of an elderly, stylishly disturbing great uncle.
The film is challenging but with a lightness of touch (apparent in the occasional use of ironic voice-over, much like a mockumentary) in how it tells its tale: a city's children prey to a pyschopath who whistles, buys balloons and sweets, as well as acting out far more depraved instincts.
One of the film's strong suits is the way it draws witty parallels between the city's police and its underworld. A council of leading criminal figures is amusingly compared with high-level police meetings, as are their respective organizational methods, and relative operational efficiency as the criminals form a shadow police force to track the killer.
It is full of memorable moments: the shots of a child's ball bouncing and a loosed balloon (leaving a child's abduction and murder off-screen); hands and voices appearing out of shot; the set-piece of a chase through the streets and ensuing man-hunt through an office block; the chalk 'M' marking out the killer on his overcoat; the show-trial beneath the city.
For a film about child-murder it also has some genuinely funny moments, with more laughs than you might expect. One of these comes from the incongruity of a gross-out, under-the-desk shot capturing the wonky bulk of the police detective leading the case from an eye-wateringly unflattering angle. Lang's movie maybe is making the point here that the police (and implicitly the city's other elements - the press, the shadow-police/underworld, local politicians, public health system, citizenry) should not be seen head-on as objective arbiters of social control and justice.
One of the film's strong suits is the way it draws witty parallels between the city's police and its underworld. A council of leading criminal figures is amusingly compared with high-level police meetings, as are their respective organizational methods, and relative operational efficiency as the criminals form a shadow police force to track the killer.
It is full of memorable moments: the shots of a child's ball bouncing and a loosed balloon (leaving a child's abduction and murder off-screen); hands and voices appearing out of shot; the set-piece of a chase through the streets and ensuing man-hunt through an office block; the chalk 'M' marking out the killer on his overcoat; the show-trial beneath the city.
For a film about child-murder it also has some genuinely funny moments, with more laughs than you might expect. One of these comes from the incongruity of a gross-out, under-the-desk shot capturing the wonky bulk of the police detective leading the case from an eye-wateringly unflattering angle. Lang's movie maybe is making the point here that the police (and implicitly the city's other elements - the press, the shadow-police/underworld, local politicians, public health system, citizenry) should not be seen head-on as objective arbiters of social control and justice.
The killer himself, played unforgettably by Peter Lorre, is ultimately a sympathetic character (pitiful at least), identified as a victim of not just his own deviant compulsions (he is evidently schizophrenic), but by a society that doesn't understand how to treat his sickness, a society that is all too ready to succumb to urban paranoia, mob-rule and vigilante justice, whipped up by a hysterical press. Clearly still plenty of resonance with media witch-hunts that have occurred in the more recent past. Norman Bates was spared both the News of the World front-page and the death penalty.
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