Back when I was writing truck software, I had a contact at a brakes manufacturer that sounded exactly like Peter Lorre on the phone. Fans of classic cinema already know who Lorre is, but for the rest of you, he was Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon and Ugarte in Casablanca. He is also the inspiration for countless imitations of his voice and mannerisms. Think of the weaselly German guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark who burned his hand on the medallion. That's just another imitator. Lorre is the archetypal creepy guy. And so talking to this brakes guy, even about brakes, was a bit like having to deal with an obscene phone caller.
M was Peter Lorre's first major role as an actor. He plays a serial killer and implied pedophile. Scenes of Lorre in this role were used in Nazi propoganda videos about the evils of sexual deviance. To sum up the past two paragraphs: Peter Lorre will make your skin crawl.
And now, to sum up M: There is a serial killer on the loose in Munich. Eight little girls have disappeared and the city is in a panic. Innocent people are being arrested for even speaking to a child on the street, and mothers live in fear. The police are being criticized for being unable to catch the guy, and the criminal underworld is starting to get antsy, as the atmosphere is not conducive to business. Hans Beckert (the very bad man, played by Lorre) is captured by the criminals right as the police are closing in on him, and they put him on trial in an abandoned factory. The climactic scene is all Lorre's, a long speech about how he must kill. He does not have an alternative. Never so much have I wished that I could speak German so I did not have to rely on what seemed to be a clumsy translation to understand this chilling speech.
If you are not an insane killer, and I know I'm not, it's probably pretty hard to wrap your head around the idea of needing to kill little girls. You think, uh, have you tried just, like, not killing them? Clearly, the dude should be locked up in an asylum. The prosecution in the underworld trial argues that he should be put to death. If he were put in an asylum, he would be released in a matter of years. (Here, my faith in the system disagrees: anyone that has killed eight little girls is not ever getting out.) Beckert's defense (also a criminal) argues that many of the people in the room have killed (remember, this is an elaborate organization of crooks), and they weren't even crazy. I've pretty much given away the whole plot here, and that's why I don't write movie reviews.
The movie was directed by Fritz Lang, another legend in classic cinema. He also directed Metropolis (a movie that will blow your mind - watch it). M was Lang's first talkie. You can tell he's playing around with the dialogue and sound sometimes. Some scenes are still completely silent, while others feature conversations happening elsewhere. For example, there is a scene where a police investigator is describing the characteristics of a serial killer as the audience gets its first real glimpse of Lorre while he examines his face in the mirror. He looks afraid of himself.
What separates this movie from a typical serial killer thriller is the involvement of the underworld. Lang brilliantly parallels the investigation of the police with that of the bad guys. So you see a smoky room with the police chief and the mayor talking about how they need to catch the killer as they smoke cigars. Then you see a smoky room with the mafia boss and a couple underlings talking about how they need to catch the killer as they smoke cigars. During the trial, there is definitely a heavy atmosphere of "cast the first stone" regarding the cornered Beckert. It's a very different movie from your general "catch the bad guy" flick. In 95% of movies like that, you know from the beginning that the bad guy will get caught at the end, because that's the way movies work. Lang just makes it interesting by asking a bunch of open questions about criminal activity and mental illness.
One of the most impressive things about this movie is that it is old. I was talking about this movie to my niece, who thinks a film made in the 80s is ancient. I explained that it was about a serial killer, and she asked if it was gorey. No, it's not, because it was made in the 30s, and that sort of thing was not allowed. So the movie comes across as even more unique as compared to modern thrillers, because there is no violence. It's plenty disturbing, but in no way gruesome. Everything is implied. In the beginning, when a girl disappears, you see a series of shots while you hear her mother calling for her, each time in a more desparate voice: a ball lying alone on the ground, an empty attic, a balloon caught in a power line.
The movie has aged well. In some cases, you see techniques still used by directors today, and you realize that this guy was doing it first. Then you see camera angles and sound tricks and plot twists that are fascinating, but not used today, and this guy still comes across as revolutionary seventy years later. M has one of the earliest uses of a leifmotif in film (associating a particular piece of music with a character - think of the Jaws theme being associated with the appearance of the shark and the Imperial March song that plays when Darth Vader is around). When Beckert is stalking a victim, he whistles "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, a tune that has been ruined forever for me.
If you can't tell, I really enjoyed this movie. It's heavy and dark. If you don't like old movies (for instance, if you have never seen Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon), then it might not be your thing. In which case, you don't really like movies all that much, so why are you reading this? Otherwise, it's defintely worth a viewing. And while you're doing so, just imagine Peter Lorre talking about brakes.
It's still creepy.
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