M (1931)

Released in 1931 and produced by Nero-Film AG, M arrived at a pivotal and genuinely unsettling moment in German history. The Weimar Republic was in its dying years, Berlin was a city of visible social fracture, and the newspapers were full of real-life criminal cases that had gripped and horrified the public. Fritz Lang drew on that atmosphere to construct a film about a serial killer who preys on children, sending both the police and the city's organised criminal underworld into a frantic hunt for the same man. The fact that Lang chose to root the story so firmly in recognisable Berlin streets, institutions and social anxieties gives the film a texture that pure genre pictures of the period rarely managed.

Lang was already an established name in German cinema before M, having made large-scale, ambitious pictures that pushed at what the medium could do. M was his first sound film, and the way he used (and withheld) sound throughout the production was considered genuinely innovative at the time. Working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Thea von Harbou, Lang organised the story around two parallel investigations closing in on the same target, a structural choice that gives the film much of its tension. It remains one of the most studied films of the early sound era, cited in film schools and critical writing to this day. If you are curious about where Lang went after leaving Germany, I covered his American work in my review of You Only Live Once (1937), which he directed six years later. For another picture from the same period, Little Caesar (1931) makes for an interesting comparison, arriving the same year from a very different national context.

The performance at the centre of everything is Peter Lorre's portrayal of Hans Beckert, the killer the whole city is pursuing. Lorre was in his mid-twenties at the time and relatively unknown, and what he does here is difficult to categorise neatly. The role requires him to be pathetic and threatening, pitiable and monstrous, sometimes almost simultaneously, and the physical and vocal choices he makes are memorable enough that the performance is still discussed and referenced decades later. The supporting cast, including Otto Wernicke as the lead investigator, grounds the procedural elements in something that feels grounded and functional rather than theatrical. Lorre went on to work in English-language cinema fairly quickly after this, and if you want to see him in a very different kind of picture, I also have reviews of Mad Love (1935) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), both of which feature him in prominent roles.

A-Z World Movie Tour Germany Considering this movie is nearly 100 years old it is super impressive. The camera work and editing must have been incredibly difficult to pull off just 30 or so years after the first films. I also really enjoyed how they switched between the criminals and the police in their planning of capturing the child killer. The story itself is quite good where the entire city seems to be closing in around the main character. They're all seeming after him for various reasons unrelated to the fact he's killing kids. - we can't do crime without the cops everywhere - we are getting too many reports for no reason I do think it falls down a little bit in the middle as it's quite a bloated script. The "M" bit was my personal highlight and everything else kinda fell off. I also found it quite hard to watch without falling asleep if I'm honest. I respect its legacy but very flawed for me

I think that is a fair place to land on it, honestly. The reputation of M is so enormous that it can feel almost impolite to point out that sitting through it is not always an easy or pleasurable experience, especially with nearly a century of distance between you and the context that made it so striking. The structural ambition is real, the Lorre performance is as good as everyone says, and the sequences where the net tightens around Beckert are as well-constructed as anything from the era. But a film can be historically significant and also a bit of a slog in places, and pretending otherwise does nobody any favours. Worth seeing, worth respecting, but maybe not worth the pedestal it sometimes gets put on.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1931  | Watched: 2025-06-22

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Trailer

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Fritz Lang: You Only Live Once (1937)
More with Peter Lorre: Mad Love (1935) · The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
More from Germany: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Cemetery Man (1994) · The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) · Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
More from the 1930s: Earth (1930) · Monkey Business (1931) · Sabotage (1936) · People on Sunday (1930)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)