M

M (MORDER UNTER UNS) (PG)

D: Fritz Lang

Nero (Seymour Nebenzal)

Germany 1931

117 mins

Crime/Drama/Horror

W: Thea Von Harbou, Paul Falkenberg, Adolf Jansen & Karl Vash

DP: Fritz Arno Wagner & Gustav Rathje

Ed: Paul Falkenberg

Mus: Edvard Grieg

Peter Lorre (Franz Becker), Otto Wernicke (Inspector Karl Lohmann), Gustaf Grundgens (Schraenker), Theo Lingen (Bauemfaenger), Theodor Loos (Commissioner Groeber)

In a small German community, a child molester and murderer evades capture by the police and a mob of the townsfolk begin to take the law into their own hands to find the person who is killing the town's children.

The decades may have dated M into a dramatic crime thriller, but when it was originally released in 1931 Germany it was very much a horror story, filled with expressionism by director Fritz Lang, who made the story a parable with the rising fascism in his native country (the original title translated as "The Murderers Are Among Us")

Peter Lorre is excellent in the central role, sinister with everything he does, and the use of "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" as music to introduce his character works in a very unsettling way.

This was Fritz Lang's first production in sound, and though it has some silent scenes they serve the expressionistic style of the film well.

This work was so controversial at its time that the Nazi regime banned it when they took power in 1933, leading to some degradation in the prints.

8/10