"A man who feels compelled to destroy the lives of others should be extinguished like a fire."
Fritz Lang's M is my second movie after his sci-fi epic Metropolis and is some ways it is his more refined of the two. While Metropolis was a grand setting and a grand movie that by its nature had some very extended set pieces that still look great but felt dragged, M is centered on a much much smaller affair and thus explores human psyche and thought on a smaller society and individual level.
At the centre of this film is the murder, it's one of those movies where the audience already knows the killer and while that does away a bit of the mystery and thriller that a well, murder- mystery thriller like any of the modern ones provide because you're not interested in who the killer is but will they catch him? It still carries that sense of ominous eeriness and that unsettling atmosphere that manages to make this almost century old film stand out. Particularly the way it explores ours attitude to crime and the scenes of moral panic in this film were among my favorites.
There is a great deal of direction and sound design involved in this, specially in the main actor's performance who plays the killer. The sound design that lets silence take over a scene because any musical note would take away the immersion of the scene and that clear sense of direction particularly in the later parts of the film.
What really amazes me the most about this film and which keeps coming back to me whenever I think about it is that despite coming out in 1931, this feels as good a thriller as if it had come out today. It does not feel like it has aged a day and is a great crime thriller.
