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M is a 1931 German film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. It was Lang's first sound film, although he had directed over a dozen films previously including Metropolis. Over the years the film has become a defining classic that rivals Lang's other works for the title of "magnum opus". [1] The lead, Peter Lorre, was typecast for years after the film's release as a villain for his portrayal of a child murderer (and, it is implied, a pedophile). M also pioneered the use of leitmotif to give the film score a more intense feel. Image File history File links Peter_Lorre_in_'M'_(screenshot). ...
Friedrich Christian Anton Fritz Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-German-American film director, screenwriter and occasional film producer, one of the best known émigrés from Germanys school of expressionism. ...
Thea von Harbou (December 27, 1888 – July 1, 1954) was a German actress and author of some noble Prussian descent. ...
Peter Lorre (June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964), born Ladislav (László) Löwenstein, was a charismatic Hungarian stage and screen actor and director, who later became a naturalized US citizen. ...
Gustaf Gründgens (December 22, 1899 - October 7, 1963) was one of Germanys most famous actors of the 20th century. ...
Edvard Grieg Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist who composed in the romantic period. ...
Information in this article or section has not been verified against sources and may not be reliable. ...
is the 131st day of the year (132nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
// Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff Ingagi, starring Sir Hubert Winstead Mata Hari, starring Greta Garbo and Lionel Barrymore City Lights starring Charles Chaplin Best Picture: Cimarron - MGM Best Actor: Lionel Barrymore - A Free Soul Best Actor: Wallace Beery - The Champ Best Actor: Fredric March - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. ...
is the 123rd day of the year (124th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ...
// Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff Ingagi, starring Sir Hubert Winstead Mata Hari, starring Greta Garbo and Lionel Barrymore City Lights starring Charles Chaplin Best Picture: Cimarron - MGM Best Actor: Lionel Barrymore - A Free Soul Best Actor: Wallace Beery - The Champ Best Actor: Fredric March - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. ...
Cinema in Germany can be traced back to the very beginnings of the medium at the end of the 19th Century and German cinema has made major technical and artistic contributions to film. ...
Friedrich Christian Anton Fritz Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-German-American film director, screenwriter and occasional film producer, one of the best known émigrés from Germanys school of expressionism. ...
Thea von Harbou (December 27, 1888 – July 1, 1954) was a German actress and author of some noble Prussian descent. ...
1902 poster advertising Gaumonts sound films, depicting an optimistically vast auditorium A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. ...
Metropolis is a silent science fiction film created by the famed Austrian-German director Fritz Lang. ...
Magnum opus (sometimes Opus magnum, plural magna opera), from the Latin meaning great work,[1] refers to the best, most popular, or most renowned achievement of an author, artist, or composer, and most commonly one who has contributed a very large amount of material. ...
Peter Lorre (June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964), born Ladislav (László) Löwenstein, was a charismatic Hungarian stage and screen actor and director, who later became a naturalized US citizen. ...
The word typecasting (past participle typecast) can mean more than one thing: typecasting (programming) typecasting (acting) in acting This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
Pedophilia or pædophilia (see spelling differences) is a mental state in which an adult has a preferential sexual attraction to prepubescent and in some definitions, preadolescent children. ...
This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...
A film score is a set of musical compositions written to accompany a film. ...
Source Material
M is allegedly based on the real-life case of serial killer Peter Kürten, the "Vampire of Düsseldorf", whose crimes of the 1920s were still recent enough to resonate in the viewer’s mind when the film debuted;[2]although Lang fervently denied that he drew from this case. [3] A police psychiatrist in the film cites serial killers Fritz Haarmann and Karl Grossmann as examples of how such criminals can conceal themselves in everyday society. Serial killers are individuals who have a history of multiple slayings of victims who were usually unknown to them beforehand. ...
Peter Kürten Peter Kürten (May 26, 1883-July 2, 1932) was a German serial killer dubbed The Vampire of Düsseldorf by the contemporary media. ...
The title of this article contains the character ü. Where it is unavailable or not desired, the name may be represented as Duesseldorf. ...
Fritz Haarmann (October 25, 1879 – April 15, 1925) was a notorious serial killer born in Hannover, Germany. ...
Georg Karl Grossman (who commonly called himself just Karl Grossman) was a German serial killer. ...
Plot The film opens with a circle of children playing a game that involves a rhyme about a child murderer. This foreshadows the appearance of Hans Beckert (Lorre), a serial killer who preys on children in 1930s Berlin. Initially the audience does not see his face; they merely see his shadow and shots of his body, hearing him whistle "In the Hall of the Mountain King" as he buys a balloon from a blind man and gives it to a little girl. In the next scene her mother searches frantically as the audience sees the balloon flying up into the power lines. This article is about the capital of Germany. ...
In the Hall of the Mountain King (Norwegian: I Dovregubbens hall) is a piece of orchestral music, Opus 23, composed by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsens play Peer Gynt, which premiered in Oslo on February 24, 1876. ...
Meanwhile, the police, under Inspector Karl "Tubby" Lohmann, pursue him using such modern police techniques as fingerprinting and handwriting analysis. They also stage raids and round up the usual suspects. Inspector Karl Tubby Lohmann is a fictional police officer in 1930s Berlin. ...
This article is about human fingerprints. ...
Graphology is the study of handwriting and its connection to behavior, personal information and other human traits. ...
Round up the usual suspects is a line from the last scene of Casablanca, after Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) has shot the German officer in charge of controlling Moroccos Vichy administration. ...
As the police do their work, the criminal underworld of Berlin becomes increasingly concerned about the murder spree; Not only is it bad for business to have the police sniffing around, but it is insulting to be lumped into the same category as a child killer.
Eventually, a race develops between the police and the criminals to catch the killer, who is completely unaware of what is happening. He makes the mistake of whistling again near the same blind balloon salesman. The salesman tells one of the criminals, who tails the killer and, desperate for a way to track him, manages to mark a large letter M onto the killer's coat in chalk.
Now able to track the killer, the criminals pursue him and, after a lengthy search of an office building, finally catch him, bringing him before a kangaroo court. There, Beckert delivers an impassioned monologue, saying that he doesn't want to commit these crimes, and that he should not be punished for being insane. The monologue ends with the line (delivered by Lorre in a near scream) "Who knows what it's like to be me?" This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
A monologue, pronounced monolog, is a speech made by one person speaking his or her thoughts aloud or directly addressing a reader, audience, or character. ...
Inmates at Bedlam Asylum, as portrayed by William Hogarth Insanity, or madness, is a semi-permanent, severe mental disorder typically stemming from a form of mental illness. ...
As the criminals are on the point of killing Beckert, the police arrive, snatching him from their grip.
The final image of the film is that of the five German judges about to give Beckert his sentence. The judges are at such a height (2nd and 4th are the tallest) where they make the letter 'M.' This picture suggests, especially after Beckert's sincere oration, that society, not Beckert, is the Murder that is referenced in the title.
Cast - Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert. M was Lorre's first major starring role, and it boosted his career, even though he was typecast as a villain for years after in films such as Mad Love and the film adaptation of Crime and Punishment. Before M, Lorre was mostly a comedic actor. After his performance he landed an important role in Alfred Hitchcock's original version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, picking up English along the way.[4]
- Otto Wernicke as Inspector Karl Lohmann. Wernicke's great breakthrough came with M after playing many small roles in silent films for over a decade. After his part in M, he was in great demand due to the success of the film and he played interesting supporting roles for the rest of his career.[5]
- Gustaf Gründgens as Schränker. Gründgens received acclaim for his role in the film and established a successful career for himself under Nazi rule, ultimately becoming director of the "Staatliches Schauspielhaus".[6]
- Ellen Widmann as Frau Beckmann.
- Inge Landgut as Elsie Beckmann.
Peter Lorre (June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964), born Ladislav (László) Löwenstein, was a charismatic Hungarian stage and screen actor and director, who later became a naturalized US citizen. ...
For other uses of the term, see Villain (disambiguation). ...
Peter Lorre in Mad Love Mad Love is a 1935 horror film starring Peter Lorre, Frances Drake and Colin Clive. ...
Crime and Punishment (Russian: ПреÑтупление и наказание) is a novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments in 1866,[1] and was later published as a novel. ...
This article or section includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ...
The Man Who Knew Too Much is a 1934 suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. ...
Otto Karl Robert Wernicke (September 30, 1893 – November 7, 1965) was a German actor. ...
A silent film is a film which has no accompanying soundtrack. ...
Gustaf Gründgens (December 22, 1899 - October 7, 1963) was one of Germanys most famous actors of the 20th century. ...
National Socialism redirects here. ...
Links with other works M features a "League of Beggars", who also show up in the roughly contemporaneous Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill collaboration The Threepenny Opera and its source The Beggar's Opera. Bertolt Brecht Brecht redirects here. ...
Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950), born in Dessau, Germany and died in New York City, was a German and in his later years, a German-American composer active from the 1920s until his death. ...
Die Dreigroschenoper, original German poster from Berlin, 1928. ...
Painting based on The Beggars Opera, Scene V, William Hogarth, c. ...
Lorre's character whistles the tune "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. However, Peter Lorre himself could not whistle - it is actually Thea von Harbou who is heard. [7] In the Hall of the Mountain King (Norwegian: I Dovregubbens hall) is a piece of orchestral music, Opus 23, composed by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsens play Peer Gynt, which premiered in Oslo on February 24, 1876. ...
Edvard Grieg Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist who composed in the romantic period. ...
Peer Gynt is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. ...
Police inspector Karl "Tubby" Lohmann proved so popular with audiences that he was brought back for Lang's next film, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse) is a 1933 movie by director Fritz Lang, his second sound film, and the second to feature the villain Dr. Mabuse (if the first, , is counted as one movie in two parts rather than as two films). ...
According to the Internet Movie Database, the working title was Die Mörder sind unter uns ("The murderers are among us"), which was changed during production to M. The original title can be interpreted as a criticism of German society at the time, and of the Nazi party. In the film, the criminals gang up on Beckert and come close to murdering him themselves, only to be interrupted by the arrival of the police. The current German title is M: Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (M: A City Seeks a Murderer). The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ...
Organized crime or criminal organizations are groups or operations run by criminals, most commonly for the purpose of generating a monetary profit. ...
A different film by Wolfgang Staudte was released in 1946 with the title Die Mörder sind unter uns. Wolfgang Staudte (October 9, 1906 in Saarbrücken - January 19, 1984) was a German film director. ...
Die Mörder sind unter uns was the original German title (English titles - Murderers Among Us in the United States;The Murderers Are Among Us in the United Kingdom) of the first post-World War II German film[1] and the first Trümmerfilm. ...
Reaction
Peter Lorre in M. "Many early talkies felt they had to talk all the time", writes Roger Ebert, "but Lang allows his camera to prowl through the streets and dives, providing a rat's-eye view." Lorre's climactic speech was appropriated by Joseph Goebbels for the Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew, a Holocaust apologist film that blames Jews for devaluing German culture with "degenerate" art. Because Lorre was Jewish, the film uses his final speech as "proof" that Jews exemplify innate criminality, and refuse to take responsibility for their wrongdoings. Image File history File links LangM.jpg‎ publicity still from the original movie version of M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre; fair use in sound film article representing first sound film broadly recognized as a masterpiece This work is a copyrighted publicity photograph. ...
Image File history File links LangM.jpg‎ publicity still from the original movie version of M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre; fair use in sound film article representing first sound film broadly recognized as a masterpiece This work is a copyrighted publicity photograph. ...
Peter Lorre (June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964), born Ladislav (László) Löwenstein, was a charismatic Hungarian stage and screen actor and director, who later became a naturalized US citizen. ...
Roger Joseph Ebert (born June 18, 1942) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American film critic. ...
Friedrich Christian Anton Fritz Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-German-American film director, screenwriter and occasional film producer, one of the best known émigrés from Germanys school of expressionism. ...
Paul Joseph Goebbels (German pronunciation: IPA: ) (29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda during the National Socialist regime from 1933 to 1945. ...
Poster depicting America as a monstrous war machine destroying European culture. ...
The Eternal Jew is an antisemitic Nazi propaganda film of 1940. ...
For other uses, see Holocaust (disambiguation) and Shoah (disambiguation). ...
Apologetics is the field of study concerned with the systematic defense of a position. ...
Although sound had been used in films for several years before M, the film was one of the first to use a leitmotif, associating the "In the Hall of the Mountain King" with the Lorre character. Late in the film, the mere sound of the song lets the audience know that he must be nearby, offscreen. This association of a musical theme with a particular character or situation, a technique borrowed from opera, is now a film staple. [8] Although The Maltese Falcon is traditionally credited as the first film noir, the American genre was inspired by earlier European films with dark, stylish cinematography; In that respect, M anticipated many essential features of the genre. This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...
In the Hall of the Mountain King (Norwegian: I Dovregubbens hall) is a piece of orchestral music, Opus 23, composed by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsens play Peer Gynt, which premiered in Oslo on February 24, 1876. ...
The Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy. ...
The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Brothers film written and directed by John Huston, based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett, and starring Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade, Mary Astor as his femme fatale client, Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut, and Peter...
This still from The Big Combo (1955) demonstrates the visual style of film noir at its most extreme. ...
The movie was remade in Hollywood in 1951 (see M (1951 film)), shifting the action from Berlin to Los Angeles. The remake was directed by Joseph Losey and starred David Wayne in Lorre's role. ...
M is a 1951 a remake of Fritz Langs M (1931), shifting the action from Berlin to Los Angeles. ...
This article is about the capital of Germany. ...
Flag Seal Nickname: City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates , Government State County California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area City 1,290. ...
Joseph Losey (January 14, 1909 - June 22, 1984) was an American theater and film director. ...
Today, M consistently ranks among the top 75 of the Internet Movie Database's top 250 films, currently at #47. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ...
References Stanley Kauffmann (24 April 1916 – ) is an American film critic and author. ...
The Criterion Collection logo The Criterion Collection is a privately held company that distributes authoritative consumer versions of important classic and contemporary films on DVD. It was established in 1984 as a joint venture between Janus Films and the Voyager Company. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...
is the 12th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...
is the 12th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Crime Library is an online collection of feature stories about crimes, criminals, and trials by various writers. ...
Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays full 2006 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
is the 301st day of the year (302nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
All Movie Guide is a commercial database of information about movie stars, movies and television shows. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...
is the 14th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...
is the 14th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...
is the 14th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...
is the 220th day of the year (221st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays full 2006 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
is the 130th day of the year (131st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
External links - Program Details for M, available for download from archive.org
- Watch the film, available for download from Google Video
- Criterion Collection essay by Stanley Kauffmann
- An Article on M published at BrokenProjector.com
- M at the Internet Movie Database
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