M

recommended

Unseen murders more frightening than any Stephen King could dream of; a trial scene more intense than any John Grisham could think up; a serial sex killer more chilling, more hopelessly lost than Jeffrey Dahmer... Though director Fritz Lang filmed this B? psychological/sociological treatise nearly 70 years ago, M— presented here with additional scenes and newly found finale — has lost none of its cinematic tension and cultural relevance. As a master of German silent film, Lang brought the same moody intensity to bear on his first sound feature, a film based on newspaper accounts of a series of child murders. A lean, pre-Bogart-buddy Peter Lorre is the murderer, slowly whistling the elegiac dance from Grieg's Peer Gynt, his mouth no more than a fish gash. With a dead man's eyes bulging below a snap brim hat like the cheap grotesque balloon figure he hands his victim before the kill, he is smarmily inspired — horrific in his cherubic dementia. Until he is caught. Then he screeches and flails like a wet kitten struck by an electrical wire. Lorre's performance stands in stark contrast to Lang's portrayal of cops and criminals, seen here as fat caricatures, unwitting witless brethren. The police are stymied by the absolute lack of evidence. The crooks — their crime treated as organized business — are besieged by the cops' attempts to find the killer. This man is no longer just a cold-blooded child murderer, he's screwing up biz.

—a.d. amorosi