I watched a genius director's darkest film
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
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M is a 1931 crime film by Austrian director Fritz Lang. The city of Düsseldorf has been afflicted by a series of heinous crimes involving its youth. The killer still remains at large, with parents and families living in constant fear of another attack. After the disappearance of another girl, police begin a manhunt to find the one responsible. This in turn disrupts the operations of the criminal underbelly of the city, who set it upon themselves to find the killer and dispatch him on their own. Meanwhile, the killer is ravenous to start the cycle anew. M is known for its brilliant cinematography, complex and treacherous world, and many innovations in early sound film. It catapulted lead actor Peter Lorre into international recognition. Lang considered it his masterpiece.
(All views expressed are from a first, mostly blind, viewing. If you feel the need to come for me, please don't)
Thanks as always for your thoughts. The focus on institutions that you mention reminds me of "The Wire". It's an unusual focus that I'm happy to see. When I came to your video I remembered almost nothing from my viewing of "M" in 2020 - not even how I'd felt about it. What came back most strongly for me while watching this (before they even happened) was the criminals trapping him in the building and their subsequent trial.
I found my notes from 2020, which aren't much but I'll share: "The story feels surprisingly modern, aside from a bit of old-time unsophistication in some of the exposition scenes. There is occasional fancy cinematography, like a shot that somehow crosses thru a window (tho that shot has a hand-held shakiness that a modern version wouldn’t)."
Haha I remember that shot! You can like briefly see the glass or window grid slide sideways so the camera can cross inside.
I have just discovered gena rowlands after her passing recently
Are you familiar with her work? If not you should give it a try
Anyways M has always been on my radar but I never really got that interested in it
I love A Woman Under the Influence!
I wanted to like M more than I had, it stands as one of the bigger disappointments for me because I rarely feel letdown by a classic to this extent (There are plenty I don't like, sure, but "disappointment" I tend to use very sparingly). My issue is that the film is a charisma vacuum when Lorre isn't on screen, which is...most of it. Any time he's there it's fantastic, of course. He's electrifying. But it's just not enough. In terms of Lang I'll go with Metropolis, Scarlet Street, Die Nibelungen, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and The Big Heat over this one any day. Even a pretty underrated one like Fury with Spencer Tracy arguably at his best, too. I think "mob mentality" as a theme is more interesting when the person *didn't* do what the mob is out for blood over as happens in this film, not when he actually did. And Fury even goes further than that, questioning if the wrongly accused's thirst for vengeance, is actually so righteous after all. Such a grossly under-the-radar film.
M does still pose interesting questions about what is to be done about someone who can't *help* the evil that lives inside them and doesn't want to be that way, but for me it doesn't amount to a cohesive enough whole. The "manhunt" aspect is so painfully boring. I know Lang himself loved this one and looked poorly on Metropolis the more time went on and I respect the master's opinion, but I disagree. Metropolis is the magnum opus.
Love Fury! I appreciate the craft of his American films, but also feel a lot of the constraints of working under a Hollywood studio system. Something that I like about Lang's German production is the leeway he's given to go full pelt, to push production and narrative limits, and I think he really hits it with M. Agreed that it's at times so conceptual that it doesn't feel as narratively strong, but it makes the film much richer and dense for me. That's why in the end I felt kinda baffled that the movie has as many admirers as it does, because I think M operates on so many more levels than what I hear from general discourse.
And while I think Metropolis is a big old capital M Masterpiece, it's doing exactly what it says it is and not much beyond. It is a perfectly tuned sci fi fairy tale, and its message is as simple as a fairy tale's for me.