M Movie Review

If you make even a modest survey of the trauma that the coming of sound in 1927 inflicted on the art of motion pictures, you'll encounter legions of actors, directors, writers, and cinematographers who, having mastered that pinnacle of 20th-century artistic expression known as the silent film, were suddenly told to invent a whole new way of telling stories. Many celebrated directors of the silent era, such as D.W. Griffith, were never able to adapt to this new world, and simply vanished. One who didn't vanish was Germany's Fritz Lang, whose silent expressionist classics Metropolis, Die Nibelungen, and Dr. Mabuse were known the world over. Yet even though Lang understood that the move to sound was inevitable, even he might not have guessed that his first attempt at a talking picture would produce not simply a success, but the single greatest achievement of his entire career. Based on an actual case, Fritz Lang's ? is the story of a serial child molester/murderer (Peter Lorre) whose impact on every aspect of life in Berlin was so profound that the police place the city under what amounts to a state of siege. When the cops fail to catch him, the city's criminal underworld—paralyzed in their livelihood because of increased police crackdowns—vows to catch the killer by banding together to form a dragnet of their own. In its use of natural sounds coupled with dark, shadowy imagery suggesting the danger and decadence of city life, director Lang creates a spellbinding thriller with something extra: Peter Lorre. In his first major screen role, Lorre pulls off the unthinkable; he makes this killer monstrous, all right, but at the same time he makes him a human being—not exactly sympathetic, but a living, suffering human being nevertheless. Though Lorre doesn't have a huge amount of screen time his scenes are all indelible, and his climactic plea for mercy from the “court” of criminals remains one of the most riveting moments in screen history. (Lang's original choice for a title was “Murderers Among Us,” but it was nixed—not surprisingly—by the up-and-coming Nazis.)

NEXT STOP … Dr. Mabuse, The Big Heat, Short Eyes

1931 111m/B GE Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut, Gustav Grundgens, Otto Wernicke, Ernest Stahl-Nachbaur, Franz Stein, Theodore Loos, Fritz Gnass, Fritz Odemar, Paul Kemp, Theo Lingen, Georg John, Karl Platen, Rosa Valetti, Hertha von Walther, Rudolf Blumner; D: Fritz Lang; W: Fritz Lang. Thea von Harbou; C: Fritz Arno Wagner, Gustav Rathje; M: Edvard Grieg. VHS HMV, NOS, HHT