M (1931)
Country: GER
Technical: bw 118m
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke
Synopsis:
A German city is shocked by a spate of murder/molestations of small girls, and the criminal underworld responds to redoubled police raids by catching the culprit itself.
Review:
Full of Hitchcockian touches so confident one wonders whether the English master got his style from the German one, or vice versa. To be sure he got his lighting and design of films like The Lodger and Sabotage from his spell at UFA. Here we have a discarded ball as the cue for the fall of one victim, an ironic cutaway shot of a supposedly dead nightwatchman tucking into a hearty meal of sausage, and other variously grim or humorous effects. The film is justly celebrated for its inventive use of sound, such as whistling, but there are also sequences of richly detailed mise en scene, like the montage of the two councils of war, one criminal the other police, or the exhaustively staged break-in of the office building to flush out the killer. And then there is Lorre's performance, all eyes and silent film acting, but with that unmistakable voice unchanged from years later in his memorable self-defence during the final reel. The polemic here has lost none of its topicality or emotive force with the passing of the years.
Country: GER
Technical: bw 118m
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke
Synopsis:
A German city is shocked by a spate of murder/molestations of small girls, and the criminal underworld responds to redoubled police raids by catching the culprit itself.
Review:
Full of Hitchcockian touches so confident one wonders whether the English master got his style from the German one, or vice versa. To be sure he got his lighting and design of films like The Lodger and Sabotage from his spell at UFA. Here we have a discarded ball as the cue for the fall of one victim, an ironic cutaway shot of a supposedly dead nightwatchman tucking into a hearty meal of sausage, and other variously grim or humorous effects. The film is justly celebrated for its inventive use of sound, such as whistling, but there are also sequences of richly detailed mise en scene, like the montage of the two councils of war, one criminal the other police, or the exhaustively staged break-in of the office building to flush out the killer. And then there is Lorre's performance, all eyes and silent film acting, but with that unmistakable voice unchanged from years later in his memorable self-defence during the final reel. The polemic here has lost none of its topicality or emotive force with the passing of the years.
Country: GER
Technical: bw 118m
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke
Synopsis:
A German city is shocked by a spate of murder/molestations of small girls, and the criminal underworld responds to redoubled police raids by catching the culprit itself.
Review:
Full of Hitchcockian touches so confident one wonders whether the English master got his style from the German one, or vice versa. To be sure he got his lighting and design of films like The Lodger and Sabotage from his spell at UFA. Here we have a discarded ball as the cue for the fall of one victim, an ironic cutaway shot of a supposedly dead nightwatchman tucking into a hearty meal of sausage, and other variously grim or humorous effects. The film is justly celebrated for its inventive use of sound, such as whistling, but there are also sequences of richly detailed mise en scene, like the montage of the two councils of war, one criminal the other police, or the exhaustively staged break-in of the office building to flush out the killer. And then there is Lorre's performance, all eyes and silent film acting, but with that unmistakable voice unchanged from years later in his memorable self-defence during the final reel. The polemic here has lost none of its topicality or emotive force with the passing of the years.