М – убийца среди нас

1931 film by Fritz Lang

M is a 1931 German mystery suspense thriller film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre (in his third screen role) as Hans Beckert, a serial killer who targets children. An early example of a procedural drama, the film centers on the manhunt for Lorre's character, conducted by both the police and the criminal underworld. The film's screenplay was written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou, and it was Lang's first sound film. It features many cinematic innovations, including the use of long, fluid tracking shots, and a musical leitmotif in the form of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" whistled by Lorre's character. Now considered classic, Lang regarded the film as his magnum opus. It is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, and an indispensable influence on modern crime and thriller fiction. A remake under the same title, directed by Joseph Losey, came out in 1951.

Lang placed an advertisement in a newspaper in 1930 stating that his next film would be Mörder unter uns (Murderer Among Us) and that it was about a child murderer. He immediately began receiving threatening letters in the mail and was also denied a studio space to shoot the film at the Staaken Studios. When Lang confronted the head of Staaken Studio to find out why he was being denied access, the studio head informed Lang that he was a member of the Nazi party and that the party suspected that the film was meant to depict the Nazis. This assumption was based entirely on the film's original title and the Nazi party relented when told the plot. M was eventually shot in six weeks at a Staaken Zeppelinhalle studio, just outside Berlin. Lang made the film for Nero Film, rather than with UFA or his own production company. It was produced by Nero studio head Seymour Nebenzal who later produced Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Other titles were given to the film before "M" was chosen; Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (A City Searches for a Murderer) and Dein Mörder sieht Dich an (Your Murderer Looks at You). While researching for the film, Lang spent eight days inside a mental institution in Germany and met several child murderers, including Peter Kürten. He used several real criminals as extras in the film and eventually 25 cast members were arrested during the film's shooting. Peter Lorre was cast in the lead role of Hans Beckert, acting for the film during the day and appearing on stage in Valentine Katayev's Squaring the Circle at night. Lang did not show any acts of violence or deaths of children on screen and later said that by only suggesting violence, he forced "each individual member of the audience to create the gruesome details of the murder according to their personal imagination". M has been said, by various critics and reviewers, to be based on serial killer Peter Kürten—the "Vampire of Düsseldorf"—whose crimes took place in the 1920s. Lang denied that he drew from this case, in an interview in 1963 with film historian Gero Gandert; "At the time I decided to use the subject matter of M, there were many serial killers terrorizing Germany—Haarmann, Grossmann, Kürten, Denke, [ ]". Inspector Karl Lohmann is based on then famous Ernst Gennat, director of the Berlin criminal police. Lang's depiction of the Berlin underworld in the film was inspired by the real Ringvereine, which played a role in the German underworld analogous to the Mafia in the Italian underworld. The film's portrayal of the Ringvereine as organized like companies with a board of directors that were dominated by a charismatic master criminal was based on reality. Like the Mafia, the Ringvereine paradoxically portrayed themselves as the guardians of society's values, who upheld a certain social order. The image the Ringvereine sought to project was as "professionals" whose crimes did not harm ordinary people. Though the Ringvereine were known to be gangsters, their hierarchal structure and strict discipline led to a certain popular admiration for them as a force for social order unlike the psychopathic serial killers who murdered random strangers for reasons that often seemed unfathomable, sparking widespread fear and dread. The Weimar era was marked by intense debates about the morality and efficiency of capital punishment, with the left arguing that the death penalty was barbaric, while the right argued that the death penalty was needed to maintain law and order. The fact that Der Schränker, a career criminal, serves as both the prosecutor and judge at the kangaroo court, egging on the mob of criminals to kill Beckert, seems to suggest that Lang's sympathy was with the abolitionists. Beckert, as the monster in this film, embodies the cultural moment; he reflects Weimar society and its interest in morality and criminality. In other words, the classification of Beckert as a monster itself reveals the film’s incorporation of social issues.

M was Lang's first sound film and he experimented with the new technology. It has a dense and complex soundtrack, as opposed to the more theatrical "talkies" being released at the time. The soundtrack includes a narrator, sounds occurring off camera, sounds motivating action and suspenseful moments of silence before sudden noise. Lang was also able to make fewer cuts in the film's editing, since sound effects could now be used to inform the narrative. The film was one of the first to use a leitmotif, a technique borrowed from opera, associating a tune with Lorre's character, who whistles the tune "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. Later in the film, the mere sound of the song lets the audience know that he is nearby, off screen. This association of a musical theme with a particular character or situation is now a film staple. Peter Lorre could not whistle and Lang himself is heard in the film.

M premiered in Berlin on 11 May 1931 at the UFA Palast am Zoo in a version lasting 117 minutes. A complete print of the English version and selected scenes from the French version were included in the 2010 Criterion Collection releases of the film. The film was later released in the U. S. in April 1933 by Foremco Pictures. After playing in German with English subtitles for two weeks, it was pulled from theaters and replaced by an English language version. The re dubbing was directed by Eric Hakim, and Lorre was one of the few cast members to reprise his role in the film. In 2013, a DCP version was released by Kino Lorber and played theatrically in North America in the original aspect ratio of 1.19:1. Critic Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called this the "most complete ever version" at 111 minutes. The film was restored by TLEFilms Film Restoration & Preservation Services (Berlin) in association with Archives françaises du film – CNC (Paris) and PostFactory GmbH (Berlin).

A Variety review said that the film was "a little too long. Without spoiling the effect—even bettering it—cutting could be done. There are a few repetitions and a few slow scenes." Marc Savlov of Austin Chronicle awarded the film five out of five stars, calling it, "One of the greatest of all German Expressionistic films". Savlov praised the film's cinematography, the use of sound and Lorre's performance. In 1997, critic Roger Ebert added M to his "Great Movies" list. He proposed Lang's limited use of dialogue was a critical factor in the film's success, in contrast with many early sound films which "felt they had to talk all the time". Ebert also argued the film's characters, nearly all grotesques, embodied Lang's distaste for his adopted homeland: "What I sense is that Lang hated the people around him, hated Nazism, and hated Germany for permitting it."

Lang considered M to be his favorite of his own films because of the social criticism in the film. In 1937, he told a reporter that he made the film "to warn mothers about neglecting children". It is included in Empire's 100 Best Films of World Cinema in 2010. It is listed in the film reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, which says: "Establishing conventions still being used by serial killer movies, Lang and scenarist Thea von Harbou intercut the pathetic life of the murderer with the frenzy of the police investigation into the outrageous crimes, and pay attention to issues of press coverage of the killings, vigilante action, and the political pressure that comes down from the politicians and hinders as much as encourages the police." In 2018, it was voted the thirteenth greatest foreign language film of all time in BBC's poll of 209 critics in 43 countries. The film is also referenced in the song "In Germany Before the War" by American songwriter Randy Newman in his 1977 album Little Criminals. A scene from the movie was used in the 1940 Nazi propaganda movie The Eternal Jew.

A Hollywood remake of the same title was released in 1951, shifting the action from Berlin to Los Angeles. Nero Films head Seymour Nebenzal and his son Harold produced the film for Columbia Pictures. Lang had once told a reporter: "People ask me why I do not remake M in English. I have no reason to do that. I said all I had to say about that subject in the picture. Now, I have other things to say." Directed by Toby Swift, this drama won the Prix Italia for Adapted Drama in 2004. Writer Jon J. Muth adapted the screenplay into a four part comic book series in 1990, which was reissued as a graphic novel in 2008. In 2015, Joseph D. Kucan adapted the screenplay into a theatrical stageplay entitled A Summons from the Tinker to Assemble the Membership in Secret at the Usual Place for production by the Las Vegas based theatre company A Public Fit. The play is environmental in nature, transforming its audience into the members of the criminal underground who have captured and will judge the elusive serial child murderer. The play is primarily a courtroom drama, presented with no fourth wall, and utilizes flashback sequences to tell the story of the man's detection, capture and confession. A brief segment of the play is dedicated to improvised audience debate and deliberation. In 2019, a six episode Austrian German TV series was released titled "M — A City Hunts a Murderer".