M: Messages for Now from 1931

 

M  (1931)

Directed by Fritz Lang

Nero-Film AG, 111 minutes, Not rated (But PG-13 despite its subject)

In German with subtitles

★★★★★

 

 

 

Most film fans would probably say that Fritz Lang's surrealistic sci-fi film Metropolis was his masterpiece. It was also sub-rosa commentary on the Weimar Republic. It gets my vote, but Lang felt that his best film was M.

 

Metropolis, a silent film, debuted in 1927, the same year that talking pictures first came into theaters. M was Lang’s first sound movie, but it did not signal a shift towards soft entertainment. Not with a story involving a serial killer of children. An opening scene signals its macabre subject: a group of girls skipping rope to a grim rhyme. M is a psychological drama about the mind of the perpetrator who makes that rhyme come true.

 

M rests upon an old conundrum: Is there honor among thieves? We are taken inside Berlin's criminal underworld and among pickpockets, safe crackers, con artists, burglars, and prostitutes. They are not upstanding citizens, but they have a code of honor that holds revulsion for the killing of children. Moreover, a serial killer on the loose means there are more police on the streets, which isn’t ideal for those who operate in the shadows. M becomes a competition between the underworld, the police,  and enraged locals to find the killer. Thus, M is also a palette upon which we find a blind balloon salesman, grieving mothers, civic leaders, and ordinary townspeople, all of whom seek to solve the case. Lang knew something that even today we are loathe to admit: law enforcement is often too detached from the street to develop networks that efficiently solve crimes.

 

Another theme that emerges in M is don't whistle while you work. “In the Hall of the Mountain King” is the killer’s signature tune and eventually leads to his capture. Sounds simple, but it's not. The question lingers of who will capture the killer and what they do with him. Townspeople and mothers yearn to tear him limb from limb. The night watchman in the building where the killer is trapped imagines the glory that would come with apprehension. Police are consumed by strategy. But what if vigilante justice is in the hands of actual vigilantes?

 

M has one of the most unusual trials in movie history. It involves a group of criminals who pay more attention to legal rights than the rest of society. What could be more unusual than appointing a defense counsel for the man who is ruining their business? M shifts to psychology. Is it possible to feel  sympathy for a monster? Do we all have dark sides we don’t wish to face? Is there a difference between a person driven by his DNA to commit heinous crimes versus lesser crimes? Kleptomania, for example, is viewed as mitigating factor for those compelled to commit it. Today, we characterize drug addiction and alcoholism as diseases. Lang didn’t ask us to think that child murder should be overlooked, but he suggested that society has unbalanced standards by which we judge. In essence, justice isn't really blind; one scornful eye remains open to apply extralegal sanctions.  

 

This too has relevance for today. Can we really pretend that subjective factors such as social class, race, community outrage, or ethnicity play no role in interpreting motives or sentencing offenders? Honor among thieves? In Lang's movie another code among them is avoiding harm to ordinary citizens; the rich, powerful, and arrogant are fair game. Ever wonder why it is so hard to break organized crime rings? Could it be that they are more integrated into their communities than police or politicians?

 

The recognizable star in M is Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert. You can understand from this early role why he later surfaced in blockbusters such as Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. He had an uncanny ability to shift between clever planner, feral caged bird, and misunderstood victim.

 

The more I think about M, the more I see it as but a small cut below Metropolis. M is an old film and another look at the failures of the Weimar Republic that would soon give way to Naziism. But don’t be put off by subtitles, embedded politics you might not understand, or its grainy black and white stock. M, alas, has too much to say about the world in which we now live.

 

Rob Weir