Fritz Lang's brilliantly subversive crime thriller about the dangers of mob mentality.
An empty stairwell; a quiet attic; a missing spot at the dinner table; a ball rolling down a hill; and a child’s balloon caught in the power lines. In the hands of a skilled director, even the most mundane settings and objects take on feelings of deep significance, and in this case, it’s a feeling of mounting dread. Having mastered the art of filmmaking during the silent era, revered German director
Fritz Lang proved that in
M, his first sound film, he still didn’t need more than a mother’s voice calling for her child, and a deafening silence in response, to create one of the most implicitly disturbing intro sequences in cinema history.
In M, a serial killer who preys on children is terrorizing a city in Germany. The police storm the streets in search for the killer, and with their overwhelming presence bogging down business for the city’s underground crime syndicates, the syndicate bosses decide to launch an organized manhunt of their own.
Fritz Lang didn’t stamp his name into film history by playing to convention though. What starts as a psychological crime thriller ends as a social commentary about the dangers of mob mentality and the importance of a fair justice system.
By the end of the film, Lang (thanks in large part to the legendary performance by actor
Peter Lorre), against all odds, is even able to elicit empathy for the film’s antagonist, a man who we learn has spent his entire life in mental anguish, terrorized and tortured by the voices in his head and the heinous acts they drive him to do.
In nearly every other narrative, a child murderer would serve as nothing but the most contemptuous of psychopathic villains, a demon in human skin for us to loathe, but Lang subverts our expectations to show the humanity in the individual, and the monstrosity in the mob, ending the film with a plea for stronger and more caring communities, rather than moral superiority and fruitless acts of vengeance in the aftermath. Nothing can be done to bring back those we’ve lost, much can be done to keep us from losing more.
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