Fritz Lang's M - A Historical Masterpiece

Fritz Lang's M - A Historical Masterpiece

The film M is symptomatic of the tense environment of prewar (and postwar) Germany. Since the end of the first world war, German nationalism had been vehemently suppressed by the rest of the world and then, in the early 1930’s, the Nazi party' was beginning its ascent to power. M eerily predicts the lynch mob mentality of Adolf Hitler’s agenda of genocide. The film enjoys a distinctive place in the history of cinema and particularly the history of German cinema. M came after what is formally recognized as the end of the German Expressionism movement and prior to the point at which German national cinema became centered around the propaganda films of the Nazi party. In M Fritz Lang passes judgment on peoples in many levels of society: he denounces parents (particularly mothers) as careless, the courts as inadequate, citizens as bloodthirsty, and criminals as ultimately self-righteous hypocrites. In this film, Fritz Lang critiques social justice and mob mentality by questioning attitudes toward mental illness and juxtaposing the processes and practices of the police with those of underworld criminals. Fritz Lang achieves this through his provocative style of contrasting sound with silence and the film’s audio track with whatever visual accompaniment was present. Lang’s exploration of various manifestations of duality (within the social justice system, within an individual, etc.) adds to the lasting effects and legacy of these profound contrasts. At a time when other filmmakers were more concerned with simply integrating the new technology of sound, Fritz Lang was incorporating it into his films to construct meaning and art. A great many of the pioneers of early sound films felt that the...

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...sle of creating film only as a visual medium. The unique position of M as a post-World War I and post-German Expressionism film as well as a pre-World War II, pre-Nazi film causes it to be overlooked quite often in the pages of cinematic history, but it is vital to film history nonetheless.

Works Cited

Ebert, Roger. “M - A Review”. Chicago Sun-Times. 1 January 1999.

http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/1999/01/M1118.html on 11 February 2002

Eisner, Lotte H. The Haunted Screen. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press. 1965

Jensen, Paul M. The Cinema of Fritz Lang. New York, A.S. Barnes & Co. 1969

Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler A Psychological History of The German Film. New Jersey, Princeton University Press. 1947

Masterworks of the German Cinema. Introduction. Dr. Roger Manvell. London, Harper & Row. 1973