Summary: Fritz Lang’s classic early crime melodrama is set in 1931 Berlin. The police are anxious to capture an elusive child murderer (Peter Lorre), and they begin rounding up every criminal in town. The underworld leaders decide to take the heat off their activities by catching the child killer themselves. Once the killer is fingered, he is marked with the letter « M » chalked on his back. He is tracked down and captured by the combined forces of the Berlin criminal community.
Hublots’ view: A vibrant thriller where the Hunter becomes the Hunted. A brilliant tour de force rendered possible thanks to the virtuosity of the mise en scène.
As I re-watched M, I was struck by the values’ reversal exerted throughout the movie. Because of this child murderer, the mafia turns into the justice and ends up in the final scene embodying the judges; criminals become the law. The Mafiosi have of course no legitimacy to undertake a trial. If the mafia can act the police and law’s parts, we can argue on the real legitimacy of Justice itself. Since everyone, especially assorted criminals, can fit in the shoes of a justice representative, we face a real questioning of our own justice system. Fritz Lang is, here, criticizing his own government, which in 1931 is on its way to become outlaw.
However, legitimate Justice barges into the improvised trial at the end. We only see a hand grasping Hans Beckert’s shoulder. The message is clear: real Justice has no face, since it must not come from a subjective entity but must remain totally impartial.
However Justice is not the only one without a face. At first, the murderer himself is only a silhouette, a shadow projected on the reward notice. By concealing his face, Lang avoids any identification and puts us in the shoes of the citizens who look for a faceless criminal. And soon this research turns into a tracking, where the society hunts up a victim, a scapegoat. And we know what were the aftermaths of that story…
Keeping up with the characteristics of German expressionism, Lang distorts space and through its representation on screen externalizes psychological motives. By filming multiple empty spaces Lang imposes a feeling of emptiness, and to a larger extent death. The murderer kidnaps children from the common places they usually inhabit (attic, playground, stairways, kitchen) as to say he removes life from these areas and creates a void, which is spatially the mark of his crime. Emanating from the void, a feeling of angst then seizes the spectator.
Sound or rather its absence conveys also a sense of anxiety. Because the ditty is sung relentlessly in the introductory scene, the silence that follows is even more perceptible. Silence goes along with the idea of emptiness; it is a metaphorical assertion, an echo of death.
As you take some distance from the film you realize once again how contemporary the subject of the film is. M could be one more faceless terrorist of the 21st century. Lang shows he is ahead of his time by questioning the concept of terrorism itself. He seems to induce that the term terrorist is a matter of point of view. Anyone can be seen as a terrorist, it just depends how you position yourself within the society spectrum. By depicting contradictory characters, who are never white nor black, we wonder to which entity the actual terrorist etiquette can be attributed. The police as well as society seem as reprehensible as the guilty. The terrorist can also lie within the one who is asking for Justice.
Ingrid R.
HUBLOTS 