LogFAQs > #983057598

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20. M (1931)
Directed by Fritz Lang
Score: 169 (tie)

Mythiot: 5
jcgamer: 12
Seanchan: 16
Lightning: 17
Suprak: 18
Seginus: 19
Karo: 19
Inviso: 20
Johnbobb: 21
Poke: 22
jcgamer

I like this movie a lot, despite having some flaws typically found in early cinema (several shots are slightly sped up, for example, which kind of took me out of it). Peter Lorre was a wonderful actor, transcending language with his expressive and intense performance. The ending was not too satisfying - I wanted to see the mafia (rightfully) tear him to bits, but its a well-done and significant early thriller.

8/10

Seanchan
It can sometimes be tough to rate old movies. First, because they tend to be a lot slower paced and more statically shot. Second, you lose out on a lot of the context of what made them special because those innovations become the assimilated tropes of the broader movie culture. That said, Ive often found that many of the classics still hold up pretty well because a well told story is still a well told story.

Id not heard of M before this project, so I went in with a bit of trepidation to a movie over 90 years old. Coming out, I found a fine movie, maybe even a good one, though it certainly shows its age.

This was apparently the directors first talkie, as they preferred to film with no sound. This is very apparent from the (I believe) complete lack of a soundtrack. In 2024, its very odd to hear no music whatsoever in a movie, not even during the credits. There were also points, such as the police moving out in force, where theres no sound for what felt like multiple minutes causing me to wonder if my receiver was on the fritz.
I found a lot of the themes to still work today. The paranoia of the faceless serial killer. The ruthlessness and terror of mob mentality. Police catching flak for not doing enough by politicians.

The best scene, and best editing, has to go to the simultaneous meetings between the police and the criminals on how best to handle the situation of catching the killer. The police want to redouble the effort to search everywhere (an affront to privacy, IMO) and believe recidivism is a likely cause. The criminals prefer to use the streets as it were, with beggars acting as their eyes and ears.

Most of the tension of the movie comes from wondering who will catch the killer first and how. Ill say, given the circumstances, I have no fucking idea why that last girl would have gone with the killer to multiple locations. I also have no fucking idea how the police didnt notice the enormous entourage of people invading that office building. In the end, the criminals catch him, we get the speeches about how he just cant help himself, and then the police have the final say.

Couple of other random thoughts: Hitler mustache on the one guy at the beginning! Smoking, smoking, smoking, and more smoking. In the Hall of the Mountain King. The ending seemed abrupt.

Lightning
Somebody must look out for the children!

Fritz Langs M is an absolutely seminal piece of crime drama that effectively defined the entire genre. It also serves as one of the very first serial killer movies, arguably the first, the other contender being Alfred Hitchcocks silent film The Lodger. It is easy to see how influential this film is watching it today, but the big question is one of how it works on its own right when viewed in the modern day.

Luckily for this film, it mostly holds up. The black and white cinematography has stayed beautiful to this day with some long, ominous shots and great images like the killer retreating into the shadows. The opening sequence does a tremendous job of setting up the horror and grief of these murders without showing anything explicitly, and the last act with the public trial shows both the peoples rage at whats happened and the moral dilemma of what to do about it brilliantly. There are sequences in here that are as good as anything youll see today.

On the negative side, there are points where the movie is showing its age. In particular a lot of the scenes with the police carrying out their investigation would have been dramatically streamlined if it were filmed today. Additionally the tone can feel a bit all over the place at times. However, even this only further emphasises how revolutionary this film was, none of the language of crime cinema had been invented yet. Overall its a bit hard to evaluate a film this old today as there are parts that are brilliant and parts that are less so but were clearly a product of their time. Either way this is still well worth a watch.

4/5

Seginus
A thematic pick for the first entry on the list, M directly pits the forces of organized and disorganized crime against one another. When an erratic and impulsive serial killer terrorizes the town, it strains the working relationship between the local police and established crime syndicate, who conduct their own manhunt to restore the status quo. The way the movie plays up the irony of this situation, cross-cutting between the separate cop and gang meetings as if theyre the same scene, is timeless. The narrative follows through by having the gangsters catch and try the killer, which makes for an interesting finale. But ultimately, Beckert pleads a pretty lousy case of the voices-made-me-do-it, and his claim that the gangsters are no better than him seems hardly tenable given what were shown/told of them.

Theres some really memorable camerawork in this, I have to applaud the long tracking shot through the deli and up through the window. I like that it took the time to indulge in this slice-of-life scene that didnt move the plot but did a great job illustrating the sense of community at stake.

Also, good lord theres a lot of smoking in this movie. Some of those rooms they were hotboxing looked unbreathable.

Karo
Both the police and a group of mob bosses attempt to catch a serial killer who has somehow still remained at large despite his brazen and uncautious modus operandi.
The movie doesn't go anywhere really surprising, and the story begins to fall apart under scrutiny. Like, they took THAT long to check the vicinity of the crimes for any former mental patients living there? lol

In places it almost seemed to be starting to make some commentary on paranoia or the mistreatment of society's dregs, but this never went past the surface level and was soon forgotten. Yeah there's some good stuff about the justice system/death penalty near the end, but then we get an anticlimactic resolution where the result is just now he gets arrested and that's it?

I would say this is something that is very cinematically ahead of it's time, but it is an example of good directing making a not so great story seem better than it really is.