The first great movie about a serial killer, Fritz Lang’s M is an undisputed classic of world cinema which still retains its power to disturb. Made two years before Hitler came to power, this brilliant psychological thriller is also a trenchant treatise on crime and justice and a vivid portrait of the rapidly disintegrating Weimar Republic. It is re-released by the BFI in a stunning new restoration to mark the 50th anniversary of lead actor Peter Lorre’s death. An extensive season of Lorre’s work will screen at BFI Southbank throughout September.
Peter Lorre shot to stardom as the compulsive child murderer who is hunted down not only by a desperate, frustrated police force, but – rather more ruthlessly – by Berlin’s criminal underworld. Unable to go about their business in a city gripped with fear and swarming with cops, they decide to take matters into their own hands, covering Berlin with a network of spies. The detailed portrayal of police procedures (based on Lang’s research at the Alexanderplatz police headquarters) has a documentary quality, while the depiction of Berlin’s prostitutes, beggars and grotesquely respectable citizens recalls the sharp-eyed satire of artists such as Grosz and Dix.
In a 1995 poll of several hundred German film critics and scholars, M was voted the most important German film of all time. Of the 40 films he made, Lang himself thought it was the one that would last longest.
Renowned for its striking imagery and inventive use of sound, M can now be enjoyed in a pin-sharp new restoration. For once, such words as ‘seminal’, ‘unmissable’ and ‘masterpiece’ are not just hype.
Opening on 5 September 2014 at BFI Southbank, IFI Dublin and selected cinemas nationwide.
