Last Updated: May 31, 2000
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One of five winning entries by Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post
that won the criticism writing category of the 1998 ASNE Distinguished
Writing Awards.
Friday, August 29, 1997
"M" is for the many nightmares it gave to me. That is, "M," Fritz Lang's
1931 dark masterpiece, out of which sprang so much of the century's bleaker
popular art and some of the earliest images of the haunting chaos that
dogs us to this day.
Alas, this "restored" version may represent a heroic seven-year effort
on the part of the Munich Film Archive and it may well be the best possible
cut of the 66-year-old film available in years, but it still seems to be
in far from pristine condition. And too many times the white subtitles
are projected against a white background, their information completely
lost.
So you can't see parts of it and you can't read other parts of it. My
advice: Deal with it like a grown-up. The movie is somehow still necessary,
and its power to disturb remains profound. On top of that, Peter Lorre's
sweaty, puffy, froggy-eyed portrayal of a child murderer remains one of
the most frightening images in screen history. All moist flesh and grubby,
fat little fingers, infantile and pathetic yet truly monstrous at once,
Lorre's character is one of the great monuments to the true squalor of
evil. He is not banal in the least, but neither is he dramatic: He's a
little worm with an unspeakable obsession, insane and yet a horrible reflection
of the society that created him.
The film is constructed as a double manhunt. In an unnamed city (the
story was based on a case in Duesseldorf, but many critics place the setting
in Berlin, where "M" was filmed), a child murderer is stalking the streets.
In a brilliant early montage Lang shows us the young Elsie being suavely
picked up by her shadowy killer, led along streets and into the woods.
There's no on-screen violence, of course, but the sense of menace is unbearably
intense, particularly as Lang signifies the murderer's dementia in musical
terms, having him whistle a selection from "Peer Gynt" as the demon's grip
on his soul grows more fierce. Lang polishes off the sequence with two
horrifying images: Elsie's ball bouncing across the grass, losing energy,
and reaching stasis; and Elsie's balloon caught (as if in torment) in the
suspended telephone wires.
The cops, under great pressure, mount a massive manhunt; they attack
the only target they have, which is the underworld. This completely upsets
the orderly nature of crime -- these guys are so well organized, they even
have a stolen-sandwich ring! -- and so the crooks respond by attempting
on their own to find the killer.
In allegorical terms, Lang seemed to be getting at the escalating conflict
between the increasingly inept Weimar Republic and the increasingly efficient
underground Nazi Party, and the underworld, being more merciless and better
organized, is able to uncover the villain before police.
It goes further. The original name of the film was "The Murderers Among
Us," which had resonance that annoyed those thick-necked creeps in the
brown shirts. It was for that reason that Lang changed the title to "M,"
for murderer and for the mark of Cain that a beggar chalks on Lorre's back
so that he may be identified and tracked by the beggars who are the reconnaissance
unit of organized criminal interests.
And, as a narrative, the film still works brilliantly. It broke the
mold before there was a mold to be broken. Lang begins by completely dispensing
with the mystery elements; he reveals Lorre at about the one-third mark,
so there's no whodunit. There's not even really a whydunit. Instead, it's
a who's-gonna-catch-him as the two sides work frantically against each
other. But even when Lang documents the final apprehension (in a brilliantly
edited and timed sequence where the cops are racing to a building that
the gangsters have all but commandeered as they search it), he has a surprise.
That is the ironic trial of which the clammy little human mushroom, where
at last he speaks for himself, declares his own insanity and the pain it's
caused him and asks them who they are to judge -- interesting questions
to be asked in the Germany of 1931.
But the movie is, perhaps, just as interesting as a piece of film design
as it is as a piece of narrative. It was the domestic high-water mark of
German expressionist filmmakers, who were about to be dispersed around
the world by the rise of those same Nazis, who would gain power in 1933.
German expressionism, which may have gotten to its strangest moment
in 1919's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," was essentially a visual version
of a treacherous universe. It was spread by this diaspora of fleeing German
genius (including Lang, who went on to have a distinguished American career)
and came to light in the works of Hitchcock and Welles but perhaps most
notably in that movie genre known as film noir, which dominated the American
screen in the late '40s.
To look at "M" is to be in the heart of the noir universe, a shadowy
zone of wet streets, dark alleyways, secret places and impenetrable mysteries.
It's astonishing how modern this six-decade-old piece seems, especially
if one focuses on the compositions and their meanings and can see past
the Victorian wardrobes worn by the citizens of a German city in 1931.
"M," after all these years, is still a fabulous movie.
M is unrated and while it contains no gore, it does have scenes of extreme
emotional intensity suggesting violence to children.
