Hello gentle readers and welcome back to another installment of the Sunday Morning Movie! (I dropped the “Antidote” part because as a few folks noted the movies might not necessarily be, um, soothing.)
Today’s feature is the classic crime drama M directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre. M is the first serial killer movie as well as an early example of a police procedural drama. It was also Lang’s first sound movie and he considered it his magnum opus. It launched both the careers of Peter Lorre, whose trajectory went from comedic to villainous, and Otto Wernicke. Wernicke played the role of Inspector Lohmann and would reprise that role with Lang in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Long tracking shots, the creative interplay of glass and light, as well as the use of a musical leitmotif were all cinematic innovations of Lang’s. M is held up as one of the finest films ever made and it has had an immeasurable influence on the art of filmmaking up to today.
Review:
I didn’t think I was going to enjoy M as much as I did. The way the story unfolds is refreshingly direct, perhaps a bit simplistically by some modern standards but then one may accuse some modern standards of being intentionally obscure. Lang makes great use of store fronts, each of which tells a kind of story in miniature that provides depth to the larger narrative. Lorre makes a great serial killer, his buggy eyes and grotesquely sensuous lips scream psychopath to me and apparently to a lot of other people as this film altered his acting career trajectory from the comedic to the predominantly villainous. Lang lets the camera tell the tale, for example when he relays the disappearance of a child by a lone ball stuck in a puddle and a balloon animal caught in telephone lines. The black, white, and gray tones of the film lend gravitas to the unseen horrors inflicted by Beckert on the children as well as his own terror when he is captured by the criminal syndicates.
Synopsis (with obvious spoilers):
Berlin lives in terror of child murderer Hans Beckert (Lorre) who has written to the newspapers to let them know he will strike again. The police, lead by homicide investigator Inspector Lohmann (Wernicke) are at their wits’ end and are frantically collecting whatever small bits of evidence they can assemble. They are also leaning heavily on the city’s criminal underground in an effort to flush out the killer. The criminal underground, led by “The Safecracker” (Gustaf Gründgens), responds by launching a manhunt of their own, employing beggars to keep watch on children in the streets. While the police narrow down their search and arrive at Beckert’s home to collect clues, the beggars have identified their man and pursue him into a large office building. Realizing Beckert is trapped there, the criminals return later in the evening and infiltrate the building by subduing it’s guards and scouring the premises. They apprehend Beckert but then are forced to flee in haste after one of the guards manages to sound an alarm. One of their number is left behind and is captured by the police. The prisoner is pressured to reveal that the underground has captured Beckert and has taken him to an abandoned distillery where he is to stand before a kangaroo court. The police descend on the gathered criminals and Beckert is taken into custody. The final scenes first show a court convening to decide Beckert’s fate and then a trio of black-clad mothers in mourning advising the audience to keep a wary eye on their children.
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There are multiple versions of this classic. The original German language version runs restored at 111m (premiered at 117m). Lots of re-shoots in the FR and ENG versions.
“M” scared the h— out of me when I first saw it as a kid. (I think Dad took me with him to an Art House in Miami one weekend to see it.) It showed little me that even “friendly” strangers could hide very dark secrets. The scene with the balloon is pure terror, of the unseen kind.
This is “horror” when done right. What you cannot see, but must imagine, is infinitely more terrible than plain old guts and gore. That’s why I still have trouble with ‘modern’ “slasher” films.
Stay safe and don’t take candy from strangers.
‘It launched both the careers of Peter Lorre, whose trajectory went from comedic to villainous’
Later on in his career he was able to combine them both into the film “Arsenic and Old Lace”-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHQxpW5QB1E (1:11 mins)
And in his honour-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lorre
I still favour Lorre’s portrayal of Joel Cairo in Houston’s version of “The Maltese Falcon.”
The scene where Effie Perrine, Sam Spade’s secretary at the agency brings in to Spade Cairo’s calling card. Spade sniffs it and looks quizzically at Effie. Effie purrs: “Gardenia.” Nuff said. Cairo’s ‘character’ is set up before we even see him. Then Lorre steps into the scene and steals the show.
That was having fun with the audience along with putting one over on the Hayes Board.
Lorre was not above making fun of himself either. Case in point, the later Roger Corman gem “The Raven.” The script was adapted from Poe’s poem by, of all people, Richard Mattheson.
Goebbels wanted Lang to head his cinema operation but Lang fled instead although his account of same may have been somewhat embellished. Wiki has the details here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Lang
For those who like podcasts Lambert’ fave In Our Time did a discussion about him
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012s94
I’ve seen some of his American films which are good.
One of my all-time favorites in the Cinematic Dialogue Category:
“You despise me, don’t you Rick?”
“If I gave you that much thought I probably would.”
Sorry for the potato quality of the video, but any mention of Peter Lorre makes me think of the Tom Smith song. https://youtu.be/3amlmnMWDZc?feature=shared
Love the early talkies, such a departure from physical comedy & drama of the silent era, although you can sense the crossover with M in use of camera angles and more, a brilliant film!
M is a great film and full of Brechtian irony as Pauline Kael pointed out. But don’t believe I’ve watched it more than a couple of times. While the earlier German Expressionism was greatly influential due to the highly visual nature of the storytelling–Hitchcock’s much more playful version most familiar–the Hollywood star system came to dominate the movie business in general and casting directors are now almost as important as the other director. Should Lang get all the credit or was it Lorre’s performance and should Lang get the credit for that?
But I get where you are coming from and those early pre code sound films are often startlingly fresh to us now. Example: It Happened One Night.
I agree about the pre code films. We have been watching them almost every night for the past six months. They have a lot of repartee. Mae West’s early films really among the best. A good one also: Guilty Hands, with Lionel Barrymore and Kay Francis.
Since above link to “M” won´t work on German territory try this in case:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MlpqOx-DMc
1) Sound
Lang 1967 in Sight&Sound (per machine-transl):
“”Our civilization is moving away from the visual and toward the auditory. The visual is the only sense that guarantees us detachment, objectivity, and rationality. All other senses are irrational, discontinuous, and incoherent, especially sound.”
Whether I agree with his psychological views of sound re: audiences I am not sure. But e.g. Orson Welles with Bogdanovich in the 1970s I believe, said the exact same thing: people hear films instead of seeing them.
And this has become basically a law by now.
I remember well already 30 years ago – professional audiences had issue with watching silent movies. Which is why the score is so important.
And this would thereof also be the story about the rise of sound design.
There is almost nothing more important today and less talked about.
“M” would offer early evidence for this development. Or at least its potential.
Jean-Luc Godard in fact was making a point over his entire career stressing that silent movie and talkies are two different art forms. He has a point. “M” marked an important transition here.
2) Mass hysteria
Lang has had a streak of films discussing mass hysteria. It was something he was interested in as staging goes and storytelling.
Compare e.g. FURY (1936)
https://www.imdb.com/de/title/tt0027652/?ref_=nm_knf_t_4
HANGMEN ALSO DIE (1943)
135 min. (Full Movie)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBcel2tootM
The story about the killing of Reinhard Heydrich by the hand of Czech resistance.
The film over which Fritz Lang and Bert Brecht had a huge fight because Brecht was no screenwriter for film.
or “RANCHO NOTRIOUS” (1952)
https://www.imdb.com/de/title/tt0045070/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_cdt_t_14
Some argued Lang was the “architect” among the directors being trained an architect. While these labels I never liked and shared it did help that he moved away from the pictoral to the more narrative pieces throughout his career. Compare his post-war Westerns e.g. with his adaptation of DIE NIBELUNGEN (1924).
While some more ‘cinema-ish’ friends are into the silents I think the “in a world” nature of the movies demands sound and music too if at all possible. I’ve been in a Hans Zimmer kick lately–his concerts are all over Youtube and one is coming out as a new movie–and some of his scores are better than the movies they adorn. Since I mention Kael one of her pet peeves was the notion that movies are all about directors and cameras whereas in reality they are always collaborative with the screenplay contribution greatly neglected by the “auteurists.” And this especially applies to American movies where creators are not much worried about foreign language concerns (caveat: foreign sales were a big factor for the silents and now the Marvel eye candy era).
I was always disappointed that Smell-O-Vision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-O-Vision) never took off, for the same reason. There’s a similar reason I hate paintings – no motion or sound. Some of my more “sculpturist” friends even enjoy three dimensional art, which makes me giggle.
“pet peeve”
what a great new term I just learned – thanks.
As to Kael – I am divided on this. My roots lie definitely with the auteur line of thinking.
Although that one has been abused and altered throughout the decades.
One should keep in mind that e.g. a “Week-end” by Jean Luc Godard in 1967 has as much legimitacy as “The Graduate” of the same year. Althouhg both are obviously very different beasts even though both directors, Mike Nichols respectively, have an infatuation with sports cars and speed 😜.
There is an interesting Q&A re: Week-end on the British DVD. British established filmmakers of the category of Stephen Frears admire the movie. Pointing out that it would be impossible to pull off such a “stunt” today (then 2000s). So this is also about what the industry allows and what not. There is no nature of law behind the kind of movies which we see.
If Hitchock suggested that for a good movie you need 3 things:
1. a good script
2. a good script
3. a good script
That may well be correct. And yet behind this he would be hiding his own conviction of being the arguably biggest living director of entertainment film of a certain era and not the biggest living screenwriter.
It´s up to midnight bar drinking to discuss that. But Hitchcock in fact is the unique example of representing both worlds – merging the Kael-ideology and the anti-Kael ideology into one super-success.
The artist who has a mass audience. Never again realized with this undeniable visibility.
In today´s world I would mostly agree. Especially re: the acknowledgement of the other deparments involved. It is a team effort. And in fact that´s part of why so many professionals get infatuated with it. The magic of a group of minds coming together is difficult to describe.
“scores are better than the movies they adorn”
True more often than is desireable.
p.s. re: mass hysteria I forgot an important entry with MINISTRY OF FEAR (1944)
https://www.imdb.com/de/title/tt0037075/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_ministry%2520of%2520fear
There is a very good old book – I assume it is long out of print – a huge folio – where Lang´s drawings and plans were reproduced for his directorial work for staging the actors for his BIG HEAT (1953).
Those plans illustrate nearly every movement by the actors and by the camera. It is a ballet of sorts. Which is nothing out of the ordinary since this is the way it was done and usually is often being done today. Even if with much less skill.
But the question is e.g. about the details and the particular choice of solutions, how fast or how slow does an actor move from point A to point B and what is the camera doing at the same time. And what shot precedes this movement and what shot follows.
Lang did develop a mastery in this aspect of creating visual rhythm and tension. If well done it might even make score totally unnecessary.
A few excerpts from Peter Bogdanvich´s entry on/with Fritz Lang in his “Who the Devil Made It” (1998), still one of the best books about filmmaking.
“(…)
The shift to sound was also a turning point for Lang: in its documentary qualities, M anticipates his talking American period far more than it resembles his silent German period. Given equal freedom and the differences in milieu, Lang might easily have made M the same way in Hollywood as he had in Berlin; Joseph Losey did an American remake in 1951—for certain sequences, shot-by-shot.
Not unlike a few other “foreign” directors, Lang’s eye was occasionally better than his ear, and the sound and timing of his dialog sometimes feel like a translation. The Big Heat is marred by several “average family” scenes (Glenn Ford, wife and child) that ring false, perhaps also because Lang has no interest in “normality”—actually, he denies its existence. The insulted and injured—those warped by life, crippled physically or emotionally by the events of their lives—are Lang’s true concern.
(…)”
re: fascism (I was never entirely sure about this. It´s too easy and comes too handy in hindsight. Lang was a great salesman of his own persona and story of emigré from Nazi-Germany.)
“(…)
The four anti-Nazi films Lang made in America (Man Hunt, Hangmen Also Die, The Ministry of Fear, Cloak and Dagger) are characterized by an intense personal involvement, a vivid awareness of the fascist mind, missing from other similar movies of that era. Not only had Lang personally known these types in Germany, but several of his early films (Die Spinnen, Dr. Mabuse der Spieler, Spione) had forecast the Hitler calamity in their portraits of diabolical super-criminals planning world domination. Lang’s last film in prewar Germany, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, was actually a thinly veiled anti-Nazi picture (therefore, the world’s first), which was banned by Goebbels. With Hitler’s plots a reality, Lang brought venom, savagery and a kind of universality to the American anti-fascist films, which transcend the propaganda of their day.
(…)”
From the conversation which I recommend to everyone –
“(…)
A: While I was preparing Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse [The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse, 1933], I went and lived for two or three days in an insane asylum. In the original version, I had a man who thought he was a grandfather clock; he stood there and made a movement with his arms like a pendulum—and I dissolved to a grandfather clock. One day this man has a feeling that some of his springs have fallen out, so he crawls on the floor and tries to find them. It’s very funny: when you show insane people to an audience, they laugh—they don’t see the horror.
I put all the Nazi slogans into the mouth of the ghost of the criminal. I remember one in the film: “The belief of the normal citizen in the powers he has elected must be destroyed. And when everything is destroyed—on this we will build the realm of crime.” Which is exactly what the Nazis said.
(…)
I became tired of the big pictures (…) I made M as a reaction to that. And from that day on, I’ve always turned down the so-called big pictures, the spectacles with the huge mass scenes. We called them “monumental films.”
Q: You also never did science fiction again.
A: I was a great lover of science fiction and I knew a lot of writers. Just before the Second World War, there was a story in a magazine that somebody had invented a bullet which followed you wherever you went. We all thought this was a ridiculous idea. Then came the war and we found out that the things really invented by scientists went far beyond the imagination of science fiction. So much so that today science fiction is no longer what it was. Because today you can change the direction of a bullet—a rocket is a bullet, no?—while it is flying toward Mars. By the way, did you know that I invented the countdown? Very funny: it came from a dire necessity in Woman in the Moon. When I shot the takeoff, I said, “If I count 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 50, 100—an audience doesn’t know when it will go off. But if I count down—10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ZERO—then they will know.” Thus the countdown.
(…)”
p.s. As the countdown story goes, sci-fi writer and physicist Hermann Oberth (who was a bit of a Nazi) and a colleague of Von Brown´s, I believe complained because it was him not Lang who came up with the countdown, if I recall the rumour correctly. Oberth had been invited as a scientific advisor for the production of “The Woman in the Moon”. Oberth had initially hoped the movie would be a boost for independent rocket R&D which then was still not regarded as worthy of major investment by the military.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Oberth
and his voice!
wheedling, insinuating, slightly effeminate, sibilant like a snake
all the more menacing for being disguised as a lowly creature easily crushed underfoot
One bit of video commentary on/analysis of Fritz Lang’s M:
“1931: M – How Cinema Asks a Difficult Question” here.