For a moment, I considered not opening this review with a reference to Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, thinking to myself, “Surely, I’ve referenced it enough already.” Then I double checked and realized I’ve only brought it up twice previously (in my reviews for Beau is Afraid and The Love Butcher), so here we go! Tristram Shandy was published in multiple volumes, the first of which was released in 1759, not even two decades after the publication of the first novel of the English language, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, in 1740. Shandy has long been a fascinating point of study not just because it’s one of the first novels in our language, but because despite being one of the earliest examples, it already demonstrated many stylistic and literary characteristics that we associate with postmodern fiction. Novels went from a complete, well, novelty to something that could be deconstructed within an astonishingly short time, with Shandy featuring a stream of consciousness narrative, a playful interaction with the nature of the printed word on the page (including several pages left intentionally blank to demonstrate a story that the narrator does not know), and various other elements first-time readers are often shocked to find in something so old. 

Fritz Lang’s most famous work, the pioneering silent science fiction film Metropolis, premiered in 1927; just four years later, his first sound picture M was screened for the first time. Within the short period between them, Lang had already developed some of the basic elements of what we would consider keystones of narrative filmmaking and used them in an effective way that’s the equal of any film that’s been produced in the intervening nine decades. In many ways, the introduction of “talkies” was like the building of a cinematic Tower of Babel (quick note here—I started writing this before seeing Metropolis and learning that the biblical Babel story is actually a big part of that text), necessitating a foundational re-evaluation of the language of the art down to its very core. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

M is the story of a Berlin in terror, as several children have been found murdered in a way that demonstrates they share the same killer. As the film opens, a woman scolds the kids in the courtyard of her building for singing a nursery rhyme about a killer of children as she sets the table for her daughter, who never appears, despite her mother’s increasingly plaintive shouts of the daughter’s name into an empty street. The girl, Elsie Beckmann, has already fallen beneath the dark shadow of Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre), who lures the child to accompany him by purchasing her sweets and a balloon from a blind street vendor. Her eventual fate is implied as we see her beloved ball bounce into a ditch, and the balloon she was given drifts in the wind, abandoned. This sets off a fury in the city, as angry parents demand that more be done to apprehend the child predator, and this creates a domino effect. First, Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) of the police begins to crack down on various underworld activity, including harassing the patrons of a seemingly legal drinking establishment. That leads, in turn, to a meeting between various capos—led by a man known only as “The Safecracker” (Gustaf Gründgens)—for different criminal elements around the city to convene so that they can start their own manhunt so that the investigation will end and they can get back to racketeering, prostitution, and the like. 

While Lohmann’s men set out to find the murderer using then-novel forensic science like fingerprints, handwriting analysis, and behavioral studies, Safecracker’s boys set up an organized city-wide network of informants among the unhoused. Both end up finding Beckert at roughly the same time, as the killer’s habit of whistling “In the Hall of the Mountain King” during his compulsory episodes leads the blind balloon vendor from the beginning to identify Beckert to one of Safecracker’s men, and they tail him and even manage to tag him (with a white “M,” hence the title) before he realizes he’s being followed and ends up trapped in an office complex. The criminal underworld sets out searching the entire building where Beckert has gone to ground, while Lohmann’s men lay in wait at Beckert’s home, having discovered where he lived through methodical search and the discovery of red pencil shavings that matched the letters Beckert had written to the police. With Beckert now in their hands, Safecracker and company hold a kangaroo trial for the man, one in which he must plead his case for mercy, leading Lorre to give one of the greatest monologues in cinematic history. 

One of the truly great inventions that Lang gives us here is the narrative montage. In a silent film, narrative has to be displayed entirely through image and action, with dialogue and the occasional expository interstitial card, while M takes advantage of the opportunity to deliver information through audible dialogue and visuals at the same time. There’s a point in the film where Inspector Lohmann explains the methodologies that he and his men are using to try and locate the murderer, and as he describes various departments and what they do, we’re able to “visit” those people and places without a break in his monologue and without having to create interstitial expository cards (the closest we come is to a sign that identifies the homicide department). It’s such a common part of contemporary film language that its use is invisible to us now but is a quantum leap in filmic storytelling that we shouldn’t take for granted. Germany’s first “talkie” was The Blue Angel starring Marlene Dietrich, appearing at the movie theater only a year before M, and yet Lang had already created something that’s as integral to the nature of film as we know it as the letter “e” is to our language. And this could have been catalyzed in just about any movie, but it just so happens to have happened in one of the true masterpieces. 

That’s not the only thing that makes it feel so ahead of its time. So much of what we talk about when we talk about a film’s morals and ethics in the present is a discussion of the clarity of the value that the text espouses, but M is less concerned with blame than it is with prevention. That’s demonstrated in two ways: one that’s clearly intentional and is core to the reading of the film, and the other that’s a little more ambiguous and may have been unintentional. First, Lorre’s Beckert is one of the most compelling depictions of a compulsive evil on film. His utter fear at being trapped like a hunted animal pleading for mercy and compassion making him almost pitiable, in spite of the fear we know he inspires. At first appearing solely as a menacing figure, his terrified screaming about how he lives in a constant state of mental agony and that he can only quiet the voices when he commits these heinous acts, one can’t help but pity him, even while affirming that his afflictions don’t justify his crimes. Although there are several minutes of footage that are missing and the abruptness of the ending implies (at least to me) that there may be some frames missing from that final reel, the film that exists is the text that we have and so we must interpret from it. We never hear the verdict of Beckert’s trial; we cut away from the doors of a courtroom to find a few weeping mothers on the bench outside. “This won’t bring back our children,” is all that they have to say, and then “We, too, should keep a closer watch on our children.” Beckert is certainly to blame for his crimes, but he is not the only one responsible, and the only thing that we can exert influence over is ourselves and the company we keep, so that’s where our energy should go. Secondly and more subtly, it’s worth noting that although the police and organized crime figure out Beckert’s identity at roughly the same time, the police go about arresting Beckert by waiting for him in his home while Safecracker’s men catch Beckert when he already has his next victim in hand. Their methodology may not be “just,” but if this had been left entirely to the law, they would have only apprehended him after he had already slain another child, while community action prevented another death. The depiction of a kangaroo court makes it clear that we’re not supposed to see the summary execution of this guy as “justice,” and that the state’s justice should prevail (even if Beckert’s fate is ambiguous), but it’s still inarguable that one more little girl would have died if those same people hadn’t taken the law into their own hands in the first place. Prevention supersedes responsibility. 

M has been so beloved for so long that it’s difficult to say anything new about it. It’s the kind of classic film urtext that has been dissected, contextualized, and decoded nearly to death in nine decades since its release. That also makes it the kind of urtext that has so much discourse that most people are intimidated by the sheer amount of scholarship surrounding it or think that it’ll be outside of their grasp to understand, or they think it falls into the category of impenetrable artsy-fartsy stuff that culture snobs are always going on about. None of that is true. This movie is extremely accessible, not to mention scary, beautiful, and bewitching. There’s a reason that it’s stood the test of time.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond