10 / 10
Official trailer
M is Fritz Lang’s 1931 German film and the first proper serial killer film in cinema history. Peter Lorre plays Hans Beckert, a child murderer hunted at the same time by the Berlin police and by the city’s criminal underworld whose own operations the police investigation has disrupted. Thea von Harbou and Lang wrote the screenplay, based on real serial murders in late 1920s Germany. Nero-Film produced the film, which was released in Germany in May 1931.
The work transformed cinema’s relationship to criminal psychology and established structural and visual vocabulary that later crime cinema has continued to develop. M floors me. It’s a 1931 film about a child murderer, and it’s more modern, more frightening and more morally uncomfortable than most crime pictures made since. Lorre alone would earn it a 10 from me, and Lang surrounds him with a whole city that feels like it’s holding its breath.
The film works as crime thriller and as study in collective response to particular human evil. The work refuses the heroic protagonist tone that crime cinema typically deploys. The Berlin police and the criminal underworld both pursue Beckert. Both groups achieve partial successes. Both groups show institutional limitations. The depicted criminal is presented with psychological complexity that crime cinema typically denies its central evildoers. The structural design uses parallel pursuit to develop both the procedural argument and the psychological argument across the runtime.
The Lorre Performance
Peter Lorre’s performance as Hans Beckert is among the foundational performances in cinema history.
The character is depicted as both monstrous and pitiful. The actor establishes both tones through distinct physical work. Beckert’s habitual whistling of Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ provides the audio signature that the audience tracks across the runtime. The character’s compulsive particular behaviors when stalking victims are horror element. The same character’s distinct psychological breakdown when confronted works as pathos element.
The performance’s most committed sequence is the underground trial, where Beckert defends himself before the criminal underworld. Lorre delivers a long monologue about his compulsions and his inability to control them, and I find it almost unbearable to watch. I can’t dismiss him as pure evil after that speech, and I can’t excuse him either. That tension is why M sits at a 10 for me. Cinema rarely attempts anything this hard even nine decades later.
For Writers
Character work can refuse both condemnation and sympathy in ways that produce psychological complexity. M’s Beckert is depicted as both monstrous and pitiful without the work resolving the tension. This applies to fiction with difficult characters. Consider whether your dangerous characters work at single dramatic tones or sustain multiple simultaneous tones. The sustained complexity is harder to achieve but produces work that engages with human evil instead of dismissing it through either pure condemnation or pure sympathy.
The Parallel Pursuit Structure
The film’s structural design uses parallel pursuit by police and by criminals to develop multiple arguments at the same time. The police pursuit works through investigative procedure including handwriting analysis, witness interviews, and surveillance.
The criminal pursuit works through informal community surveillance including beggars positioned across the city to observe potential victim engagements. The two approaches produce different partial successes that the audience can compare across the runtime.
The parallel structure also produces particular social argument.
The criminal underworld pursues Beckert partly because his murders have disrupted normal criminal operations through increased police presence. The criminals’ motivation is institutional instead of moral. The film argues that even criminal institutions require certain limits to work effectively. The argument works through depicted dramatic situation instead of through stated commentary. Parallel structures can develop social arguments that single-perspective narratives can’t support.
The criminal side of the hunt delights me. Crooks organizing a manhunt because a murderer is bad for business is a pitch-black joke, and Lang plays it completely straight. That makes it funnier and nastier at the same time.
For Writers
Parallel structures can develop social arguments that single-perspective narratives can’t support. M uses parallel police and criminal pursuit to argue that even criminal institutions require certain limits. This applies to fiction. Consider whether your work benefits from single-perspective or multiple-perspective treatment. Multiple perspectives allow comparative arguments that emerge from the comparison itself instead of from stated commentary. The structural choice is itself argumentative content.
The Sound Innovation
The film works as one of the earliest accomplished sound films in cinema history. Sound recording technology was still developing in 1931. Most early sound films treated audio as recorded reproduction of dialogue with limited use of audio as narrative element. M uses sound as central narrative material. Beckert’s whistling identifies him across the runtime. The blind balloon seller eventually identifies him through hearing the whistling. The audio element drives the dramatic resolution instead of being decorative support.
The balloon seller is the moment I love most. A blind man catches a killer by ear, and I think it’s the smartest use of sound in any early talkie I know. Lang had a brand-new toy, and he used it to solve a murder.
The sound innovation extends to particular audio techniques that later cinema continued to develop. The film uses overlapping dialogue, audio cuts between scenes, and audio that bridges otherwise unconnected sequences. The techniques established vocabulary that mainstream cinema wouldn’t fully access for several years.
The work is a foundational document for cinema’s transition from silent to sound production. The technical innovations were possible because Lang and the production team committed to sound as creative material instead of as recording technology.
For Writers
Technical innovations can produce creative possibilities that later work continues to access. M’s sound innovations established vocabulary that mainstream cinema wouldn’t fully develop for years. This applies to creative work broadly. Consider whether your work has access to technical innovations that conventional approaches don’t deploy. The willingness to commit to innovative technical approaches can produce work that audiences experience as foundational instead of as derivative.
Craft Note
Lang’s structural decision to use parallel pursuit required careful preparation across screenplay development, casting, and production design. The police investigation and the criminal investigation needed to work at equivalent dramatic intensity. The two groups needed sufficient internal differentiation that audiences could track multiple particular characters across both pursuit lines. The production design needed to support both institutional environments. The completed film works because each production decision served the parallel structure instead of privileging either pursuit. The lesson applies to creative work broadly.
Parallel structures require production investment proportional to the structural complexity. Each parallel line receives the development that single-line work would have received. The investment is serious but produces work that conventional structures can’t generate.
Does M still hold up?
M is a 10 for me, and I don’t think it’s a close call. Lorre makes a child murderer pitiful without once asking me to forgive him, the parallel hunt by police and crooks says more about a city than most films manage in three hours, and that whistled Grieg tune is the creepiest sound cue I’ve ever heard. It was the first proper serial killer film, and very few of the hundreds that followed have come anywhere near it.
