M

Piercing screams, a whistled leitmotif and sudden silences again and again: in his first sound film, Lang makes consistent use of the new artistic medium as an additional dramatic element that heightens the images rather than merely accompanying them. The protagonist of this blend of gangster film, psychological drama and thriller is the impulsive, driven child murderer Hans Beckert, alias ‘M’ (played by Peter Lorre), who is initially pursued by the police and soon also by the criminal underworld. When M falls into the gangsters’ tightly-woven net, a gangster tribunal is quickly convened. Lorre’s confession was later infamously incorporated into the anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film Der ewige Jude (Fritz Hippler, Germany 1940). (mg)