M
Peter Lorre’s performance as Hans Beckert ensured that all the research did not go to waste and has been called “one of the defining performances of movie history.” In many ways, Beckert’s mock trial sequence set the stage for all future film psychos: the mental breakdown and subsequent speech, begging the audience for understanding. "But can I … can I help it?" he screams. "Haven’t I got this curse inside me? The fire? The voice? The pain? … Who knows what it feels like to be me?"
After Metropolis (1927), the amount of work that went into making M is not surprising. In the end, M drew into question the confidence we have in society when one individual can cause such mayhem within a city. It also raises the question of punishment and the death penalty. The "Vampire of Düsseldorf" and the "Butcher of Hanover" had both been decapitated.
When the Nazis came into power, M was banned, but parts of Peter Lorre’s performance wound up in the Nazi propaganda film Der ewige Jude. The Nazis vetoed the film’s original title, Murderers Among Us and tried to stop the film’s production. It is generally believed that the Nazi reaction to this film hastened Fritz Lang’s flight from Germany, when they reacted poorly to his second talking picture The Testament of Dr. Mabuse in 1933. When Josef Goebbels offered Fritz Lang a role in the Nazi film business, Fritz Lang fled – the same day.
Fritz Lang always believed that M was his best work because of the critique of society it so artistically advances. Although it was remade by Joseph Losey in 1951, the original version still has a strong impact on audiences today.
Watch the whole film on google video
See Also
Herzog, Todd. "Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany." MLN 110: 4 (September 1995): 989-992.
McGilligan, Patrick. Fritz Lang: The Nature Of The Beast. St. Martin's Press (1997).
Monaco, Richard, and Bill Burt. The Dracula Syndrome. Avon Books (1993).
Winkler, Martin M. “Fritz Lang’s Mediaevalism: From Die Nibelungen to the American West.” Mosaic 36 (2003).