M (1931)
Directed by Fritz Lang
In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.
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3 films that influenced M
What critics say influenced M
One of the greatest of all German Expressionistic films, M's striking, remarkable cinematography was the creation of Fritz Arno Wagner, who also left his dank, tenebrous imprint on F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu.
Lang’s cinematographer, Fritz Arno Wagner, worked on a handful of important films throughout the golden age of German cinema, including “Nosferatu,” and here he does a remarkable job of creating empty spaces that prickle with tension, and they propel the story to a series of later scenes in which the killer is apprehended by a host of eager criminals.
While it would be absolutely accurate to call F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu and Charlie Chaplin's City Lights two of the greatest silent films ever made, it would also be somewhat limiting.
The plot of M echoes the fascination with shadowy syndicates and underworld figures that Lang exhibited in earlier films such as the Dr. Mabuse pieces and Spies : When a police dragnet for the child murderer upsets normal criminal activities, the criminals themselves organize and track the suspect down, labeling him, without his being aware of it, with a chalk "M" on the back of his coat.
Mabuse film while introducing some of the principles of editing continuity found in M. Scripted by Thea von Harbou (Lang's second wife), it pits a government agent (Willy Fritsch) against a wheelchair-bound international banker (Rudolph Klein-Rogge) whose spy ring is stealing classified documents, and its fanciful and imaginative approach to the thriller form clearly inspired both Alfred Hitchcock and Thomas Pynchon.
With its deco-futurist design (including Edgar Ulmer’s operatic sets), Metropolis has long been enshrined as a visual chef-d’oeuvre, its images plundered by everyone from Ridley Scott to the Wachowski Brothers.