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Forebear to judge, for we are sinners all.
--Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part II, Act III, Scene 3
It is one of the many dilemmas into which mankind has maneuvered itself that here again the humane claims made for the individual are in opposition to the interests of mankind as a whole. Our sympathy with the asocial defective . . . endangers the security of the nondefective.
--Konrad Lorenz, Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins (New York, 1974)
Perspective: Sound in Cinema
The advent of sound in cinema caused a revolution in film making. Although in the first few years after the appearance of The Jazz Singer, in 1927, sound was considered primarily a novelty ("The Movies Talk!"), it soon became apparent that a significant dimension had been added to motion pictures. In the perspective that precedes our analysis of The Last Laugh, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both silent and sound films. In those pages we suggested a test by which one can judge whether a sound film is intrinsically different from a silent film: if the sound track were eliminated, the film would have to have been conceived in other ways.
In 1930 a film appeared that has become a classic not only because of its emotional intensity and striking visual techniques, but also for its historical significance. In M, sound was integrated with the other elements of the film to a degree previously not achieved. In the following paragraphs we will explore some of the means by which sound can be a vital component of a film, illustrating our generalizations whenever possible with examples taken from M.
A sound track conveys to us three basic types of sound. The most obvious is human speech. Then there are physical sounds: a glass breaking, footsteps on stairs, a train whistle (no one who has seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes will forget the use of this sound at a climactic moment in the film), a door slamming—the list is endless. In this category belongs music played or a song sung by someone on the screen and heard on the sound track. Finally there is background music that serves, among other things, to create atmosphere, to heighten dramatic scenes or comment on them, and to facilitate transitions between sequences.
As the finest of silent motion pictures demonstrate, a film can be a work of art without sound. It is a question, however, of the degree of effectiveness and the possible expansion of the potentials of the medium. The former is especially true of human speech. We are not referring only to the ability of speech to increase the verisimilitude of a film, but also as a means of intensifying the drama of a scene. Instances of this quality in M include the children singing in the first shot of the film; Mrs. Beckmann calling Elsie's name (no title card could have conveyed the poignancy of her increasingly desperate and fearful cries); the Murderer's confession (the repeated phrase "Ich kann nicht" is etched in our memory as vividly as any image in the film ) .
An expansion of the potentials of the medium involves devices and scenes in a sound film that would be impossible without a synchronized sound track. Once again we turn to M for examples. The device of the whistled theme from Peer Gynt obviously could not have been used in a silent film. Of the scenes dependent on sound, one in particular is often cited by film historians to illustrate sound in cinema coming of age. It is the scene in the business office loft just before the Murderer is captured. The criminals have only five minutes to search six compartments. The camera holds on the Murderer huddled at the back of a compartment as we hear not only voices but also the noise of crashing doors and boxes being knocked over in increasing volume until the climax when a light is flashed on the Murderer. The suspense in the scene could not have been as intense without a sound track. There is also the scene in which the blind balloon seller in his union headquarters reacts first with pain to dissonant sounds on a barrel organ and then with pleasure to a melody. This evidence of his sensitivity to music makes more believable his recognition of the tune whistled by the Murderer.
The subject of sound in films becomes more complicated when we recognize the many combinations there can be of sound and images. Siegfried Kracauer, the brilliant writer on cinema history and theory, with his usual thoroughness, has categorized these combinations in Theory of Film, New York, 1960. We will ignore his variations and confine ourselves to a summary of the four major types of synchronization that he postulates.
Synchronization is when "the sounds and images coinciding on the screen are also synchronous in real life" (Ibid., p. 112.). Parallel synchronization occurs if speech and image carry parallel meanings, as in M when the camera is on the Murderer and he confesses in expressions and words his suffering before a court of criminals. We have counterpoint synchronization if the speech and image carry different but related meanings. The Murderer speaks works of innocence and defiance when he is first brought before the criminals, yet his face suggests his guilt and fears.
Asynchronization is when "sounds and images which do not occur simultaneously in reality are nevertheless made to coincide on the screen" (Ibid.) Here again there are two subdivisions. In counterpoint asynchronization the difference between the image and words is obvious, the relationship is more subtle and requires that we exercise our intuition to recognize it. In sequence II of M, a distraught mother calls out her daughter's name. As "Elsie!" is heard twice on the sound track, the screen presents a shot of an empty stairwell directly from above, followed by one of an empty basement (or loft).
In parallel asynchronization the sound is synchronized with images other than those of its source; however, speaker and images are intrinsically related. This device is used imaginatively by Lang in M twice to present pictorially what would otherwise be tedious recitation. The first is when the Chief of Police verbally lists the activities of the police and illustrative shots or brief scenes are flashed on the screen. The second example is when Lohmann looks through Inspector Groeber's report. A series of stills, one dissolving into the other, represents visually what Lohmann is reading. We hear on the sound track his reactions in comments or exclamations.
With synchronized sound, cinema gained not only in realism, but, even more important, added a dimension that when used creatively greatly increased the artistic potentials of film.
Story and Characterization
A child murderer has been at large for some months in a German city. The citizens are outraged and driven to semihysteria. We see a young girl, Elsie Beckmann, led away by a shadowy figure; later her body is found.
The police are stymied by a lack of clues. One procedure recently initiated is nightly raids on known hangouts of criminals.
A raid on The Crocodile is presented. We are introduced to Inspector Lohmann, chief of the Murder Squad. Across the street from the cafe a meeting takes place after the raid of representatives of divisions of the union of criminals. Schranker, master criminal, presides. The frenzied, indiscriminate activities of the police are endangering illegal activities. The four representatives agree with Schranker that they must attempt to capture the Murderer themselves.
Meanwhile, at a meeting city officials approve of Lohmann's plan to check on all mental patients released from asylums in the last five years.
The members of the beggars' union act as the eyes of the underworld in its search for the child killer. The police also are active. A detective searches the room of Hans Beckert, a former mental patient. While the detective is in the room, we follow Beckert, who is the Murderer, as he is frustrated in his designs on a little girl alone on a street, and we see that he struggles with his violent impulses.
In Lohmann's office, the detective gives his report. The brand of an empty packet of cigarettes found in Beckert's room is the clue the chief of the Murder Squad has sought. A second search of the suspect's room leads to conclusive proof that Beckert is the Murderer. The detective and two other plainclothes men wait for him to return.
At the same time that the police are finally having some success in their investigation, the criminals are also closing in on the Murderer. A Blind Beggar recognizes a tune being whistled in the distance as the one he heard when he sold a balloon to the man with Elsie Beckmann. He sends a colleague, Henry, after the Murderer. Henry manages to chalk an "M" on the back of the Murderer's coat, and then informs his superiors by telephone that the Murderer is being followed.
The Murderer runs from the young girl he is taking into a toy shop when he discovers the mark on his back. He evades his pursuers by disappearing into an office building. He hides in the loft, but is locked in there by a Night Watchman who is unaware of his presence.
Schranker and his associates raid the building, tie up the watchmen, and begin a thorough search. While the search is going on, the Murderer attempts to force open the lock in the loft door. Before he succeeds, however, he is located by the criminals. One of the bound watchmen manages to set off an alarm. In the moments before the police arrive, the criminals reach their victim and leave with him. The Burglar, one of the searchers inadvertently left behind, is apprehended by the police. Lohmann tricks him into revealing what has happened and where the Murderer has been taken.
In an abandoned distillery the Murderer is put on trial by members of the underworld. He is assigned a Lawyer. The Blind Beggar gives evidence. In an anguished confession the child murderer states that he cannot help murdering. The "defense Lawyer" supports his client and demands that the accused be handed over to the police.
After a moment of hesitation the "jury" of criminals divests itself of all pretense at lawfulness and moves as a mob toward the Murderer. Suddenly there is silence as everyone looks toward the cellar door. The police have arrived. A hand grips the Murderer's shoulder as a voice proclaims, "In the name of the law...." Fade to black.
Analysis
Even from this brief synopsis it is evident that there are four major characters in this film: the city and its citizens, Inspector Lohmann Schranker, and Hans Beckert.
The city seems dense and solid (a cinematic illusion, for the film was a studio production). The walls, doors, arches, and pavements appear heavy and substantial, an effect accentuated by tonal contrasts of light and dark. On the other hand, this solidity is honeycombed with rooms, streets, stairways, and windows. It is as if man had not built the city but hollowed it out of stone and darkness. The camera repeatedly peers down narrow streets, corridors, and stairwells, usually from a very high angle, as though it is so confined that it must move up in order to achieve perspective .
High camera angles also make the people on the streets look small crowded, and ineffectual. When they gather indoors, it is in confined quarters (the first cafe scene, at The Crocodile, the headquarters of the beggars, the trial). Faces in the crowds are individual, yet they are either flabby and tired or brutal and shifty. Only the children give an impression of freshness and innocence; however, in the first scene even they are singing about an evil man in black with his little axe. And there is little distinction between the "good citizens" and the denizens of the underworld. The same suspicion and outrage erupt in the bourgeois cafe as in The Crocodile; the same procedures and lines of authority appear in the meeting of the city officials and that of the criminals; the same hysteria is found in the street when an elderly man is surrounded by a mob as at the end of the trial of the Murderer.
Whatever their social level, occupation, or age the city dwellers are hemmed in, forced into an emotional symbiosis. The social organism can exist and generations succeed each other as long as everyone accepts his role in the hive. It is the outsider, prompted by irrational motives, that is the greatest threat to city dwellers, for he disrupts the equilibrium by means of which they survive and the city functions.
It is the responsibility of a branch of the law, the police department, to prevent such anarchy. This department is a microcosm of the city itself: an efficient organization that uses technology, yet depends for initiative and direction on human beings. The personification of this human element is Inspector Lohmann.
Lohmann is a cog in the machine, as we see at the meeting of officials, and relies on information supplied by his underlings. He could never have identified the Murderer without the list of former patients of asylums prepared for him and the report of the detective who examined Beckert's room. But through his intelligence and imagination he conceives of the line of investigation that eventually bears fruit; he makes the connection between the brand of cigarettes Beckert smokes and the same type of butts found at the scene of one of the murders; he tricks the Burglar into explaining what happened at the office building and confessing where the trial is taking place.
As with the other major characters in the film, he wears a disguise. The rotund, moon-faced police inspector, with his slicked-back hair and mouth puffing on a large cigar, has the appearance one associates with a prosperous bourgeois. Only his eyes—shrewd, penetrating, missing nothing—suggest his profession.
No one would mistake his profession, however, when he actually functions as a police inspector. Lohmann's attitude toward the criminals in The Crocodile is almost paternal (he addresses them as children). He can afford to be friendly, for he is completely in control of the situation. The criminals he deals with play a serious game according to certain unacknowledged rules, and Lohmann is a master player. But he is successful because he knows his quarry: their motives, weaknesses, and methods of operation. All he needs is a clue, even one as small as a circled article in a newspaper, and with the police machinery, his experience, and imagination, he can proceed from a crime to the identification of the culprit. The Murderer is at large because, as an inspector at the meeting of city officials notes, "the criminal and the victim are connected only by chance. An ingenuous impulse is the killer's only motive." With no clues that lead anywhere and such irrational behavior, Lohmann takes eight months to conceive of a procedure that will finally lead to an identification of the Murderer.
Lohmann has a professional's contempt for the interference in his business of outsiders and amateurs. This is demonstrated at the meeting when he sneers at help from the public. He is a product of the ant hill city, of Metropolis. Each group in the community has its own function and authority. This is another reason why the Murderer is so dangerous. He is subverting roles, so that citizens become avengers and criminals act as policemen and jurors.
The Inspector is not only a personification of the intelligence behind the police operations; Lohmann is also a person. He is individualized enough for us to identify with him and be interested in him as a human being. Although we are told nothing about his personal life, we can recognize the harassed public official who is irritated by the typing errors of a subordinate and grumbles about the coffee he is drinking while working overtime in his office. In one shot we see Lohmann as a fat man in shirtsleeves, with wrinkled socks and trousers unbuttoned at the waist.
As the police organization has a counterpart in the union of the underworld, so Lohmann has an alter ego in Schranker. The master criminal, with his steely eyes, black gloves and cane, and quick, calculated movements, is a sinister figure. He has committed at least three murders. Yet, as he explains in differentiating himself and his colleagues from the child murderer, he has always acted according to the rules:
SCHRANKER: When I run into a cop on my business, he knows the risk— and so do I. If one of us dies, okay, that’s the risk one must take.
A moment later he points out, "We must make a living." The Murderer, on the other hand, is a "monster" who must be exterminated.
His horror of the Murderer is not only moral but also practical. The reputation of the corporate underworld is suffering; funds for "various projects" are running low; the operations of the organization are being disrupted by the increasing number of police raids.
As the police have used every resource available to them to track down the Murderer, so the criminals set in operation their machinery. It is Schranker who has the idea of using the beggars to look out for the killer, as Lohmann conceived of investigating former mental patients.
Once the Murderer is captured, Schranker is the most fervent of the criminals in preserving a semblance of order. He tells the Murderer that in his trial everything will be done "according to law." The final judgment, however, is a foregone conclusion. Schranker acts simultaneously as chief judge and prosecuting attorney. He adheres to order and procedure because they leave him with authority and work to his advantage. His goal is not justice but power and efficiency. He uses the law the way he uses people. When the Lawyer seems to be persuading the criminals, Schranker argues. He becomes silent, however, when he realizes that the mob will take control and fulfill his intention of having the Murderer executed.
The police and the underworld converge on the isolated outsider, the Murderer. Dramatically he stands between Lohmann and Schranker, a bourgeois like the former and a criminal like the latter, yet rejected by both. He shares with them, however, a physical disguise. Lohmann, as we have pointed out, does not conform to our image of an inspector of police in charge of murder cases; the ascetic looking, fastidious Schranker does not appear to be an archcriminal and murderer. Least of all does the fat, wide-eyed, apple-eating Beckert look like a child murderer. The disguises of these three are in contrast to most of the others in the film, who seem to have been typecast (indeed Lang did hire actual criminals for the trial sequence).
The background of Beckert is as little revealed as those of Lohmann and Schranker. All we learn is that he has been in an asylum, now lives in a boarding house, and has a friend named Paul who sent him a postcard. There is nothing more, not even how he earns a living. Our attention is drawn to the conflict between his drive to kill and his horror of what he does, climaxed by his outburst at the trial in the distillery. We soon realize that M has little to do with Hans Beckert the man, but focuses on that dangerous, pitiful Murderer that emerges from Beckert.
Themes and Interpretations
Fritz Lang has asserted that his motivation in making M was "to warn mothers about neglecting their children" ( Marguerite Tazelar, "Fritz Lang Likes Hollywood, America and Social Themes," New York HeraldTribune, Feb. 7, 1937. Quoted in Paul M. Jensen, The Cinema of Fritz Lang, New York, 1969) . This statement makes one aware that D. H. Lawrence's adage about trusting a tale rather than the teller applies to cinema as well as fiction.
M, however, conveys far more than a cliché on parental responsibility. This is not to say that the film is void of any overt social message. It pleads persuasively that the mentally ill who commit illegal acts not be judged by the same standards as the rational criminal. We believe, however, that the most important theme in the film involves the relationship of the individual to the community. Most other themes suggested in our analysis are related to this major one
In the preceding discussion of plot and characterization, we noted that the community is a character in M. Any modern community perpetuates itself through its children and sustains itself through machinery (technological and governmental) and an authority that preserves order. The essence of authority in a social organism is the acceptance by its members of limitations on the rights of the individual. A citizen must restrain his antisocial impulses when they seriously threaten order, acknowledge that laws are necessary for order, and respect those, such as the police, entrusted with preserving the law.
There are, of course, groups other than the police that maintain order. We see in M that the underworld of the city has become as organized as the police department, with its own hierarchy, specialists, unions, and operating methods. Theirs is a high-risk business. Life and freedom are at stake, but their endeavors may yield for them optimum financial rewards. The city does restrict the free enterprise of the criminals through the police. This system can only work, though, if there is between the police and the underworld some degree of mutual respect, recognition of ground rules (even when unstated), and not gratuitous violence. In this way each segment of the community, including that of the criminals, knows its role in the social organism and supports the community as a whole.
The greatest threat to the status quo is unbridled individualism, when a person will not or cannot accept limitations on his freedom. The Murderer is such a person in the film. Not only is he violently attacking the future of the community—its children—but also, like a disease carrier, is psychologically infecting its citizens. The symptoms of this disease are fear, suspicion of others, and loss of respect for authority. The ramifications are that individuals attack each other ( as in the first cafe scene ) and become mobs ( as with the citizens in the street and the criminals in the distillery). Standard identities become blurred. The Murderer must be apprehended or the community will be destroyed. This is a fact recognized both by the conventional citizens, their chief arm of power, the police, and by the criminals.
The basic theme of M, then, is the need for the law to control dangerous individuals. If this film were less of a work of art than it is, we would find only an unimaginative insistence on the validity of vigorous authority. Instead, there are ambiguities. Although we are horrified by the child murders that Hans Beckert commits, we cannot help but feel a grudging sympathy for him. This is partly the result of the anguish that the Murderer endures from being subjected to inner forces he cannot suppress, carefully pointed up in Lang's direction and in Peter Lorre's superb performance. There is also the unfairness, no matter how justified, of a whole community relentlessly pursuing one person.
Siegfried Kracauer, in his famous study From Caligari to Hitler, Princeton, 1947, attempts to prove that pre-Hitler German films reveal a national predisposition toward authoritarianism. M well illustrates Kracauer's thesis. To a lesser degree, however, does the film support another theme he develops in his book: While German directors predominantly opted for authority, they were tempted by the opposite pole of freedom, even if it was associated in their minds with chaos. So Kracauer states that The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari "exposes the soul wavering between tyranny and chaos" (ibid., p. 74) and refers to M as "wavering between the notions of anarchy and authority" ( ibid., p. 222) .
We feel that "wavering" is too strong a word in the case of M. Lang has tempered his presentation of the need for authority by dealing with the Murderer as sympathetically as possible, but by making Hans Beckert a child murderer he has stacked his cinematic deck against any alternative. No sane person would argue that Beckert should have the freedom to continue to murder children. We might have misgivings, though, about a film—especially one produced in Germany in 1931 with a script by a writer who later became a staunch supporter of the Nazi regime—that has as its major theme that authority, both civil and criminal, should use every means at its disposal to protect the community by destroying or confining a destructive outsider. Too often in our century has "the law" and authority identified "the destructive outsider" in arbitrary terms that justify a prevailing ideology rather than the cause of justice. The specific case of a child murderer, however, supports the inherent logic of the plot of the film and its major theme.
Style and Approach
Of the thirty-nine films Fritz Lang directed in Germany and the United States between 1919 and 1960, M is the most carefully structured and stylistically imaginative. There may be more striking scenes in Metropolis and more impressive shots in Die Nibelungen and Der Mude Tod (Destine), but in none of Lang's German films and surely not in even the best of his generally undistinguished Hollywood movies did he so effectively fuse as in M what he was attempting to convey with how he conveyed it.
Lang employed a number of techniques and approaches in addition to the cogent use of sound discussed in "Perspective" to make M a visually and emotionally memorable film. Chief among these are the following: a clear articulation of one sequence to the next that gives a forward thrust in time to the film; effective cross-cutting; visual motifs; achieving the tone of a documentary until the last sequence; and a borrowing from cinematic expressionism of certain pictorial effects.
Lang is particularly clever in M in creating types of transitions from one sequence to another that are not only fluent, but also give a forward thrust in time to the development of the plot. It is as though the film built up an internal momentum that carried it inexorably to its conclusion.
In the previous section of this chapter on M, we indicated specifically the forms of transition from each sequence to the next. Two examples, however, will illustrate what we mean by fluency and forward thrust in time. At the end of sequence IV, the Chief of Police describes the efforts of the police, and we have shots or brief scenes of each of these activities. He mentions raids on underworld hangouts. We expect another example in the series. But we never return to the Chief of Police, and the raid on The Crocodile becomes a sequence in itself. The articulation between the two sequences is smooth, graceful, and unobtrusive, to the extent that we are unaware that a transition has occurred until minutes later.
At the end of The Crocodile sequence there is a cut to a man in another location looking through binoculars. He turns to his friends and remarks. "So it's 'The Crocodile' tonight." Again the transition from one setting to another is fluent. Now, however, the element of time has become important. In the first example one could not be sure that the raid was happening as the Chief of Police spoke. In this case, we know time has advanced.
By means of the techniques of cross-cutting a director can give a sense of simultaneity to events occurring at approximately the same time but in different settings. Cross-cutting (also called a parallel development or shots in counterpoint) has been used particularly to increase suspense ( as in Griffith's pursuit or rescue sequences ) or for contrast ( as Russian directors used it to point up the differences between the life of the aristocrats and that of the workers ) .
In M cross-cutting for suspense can be found in both individual sequences and in a whole section of the film. Two examples of the former are shots of Mrs. Beckmann counterpointed to those related to Elsie and shots of the Murderer in the loft developed parallel to those of the criminals searching the office building. A section of the film, sequences VIII ("The Beggars Organized and in Operation") to X ("The Murderer Pursued and Captured")—from a dramatic point of view the middle portion of the film—contains repeated cross-cutting between the Murderer, the police, and the criminals. Tension builds as we watch the two groups closing in on their quarry.
Lang only incidentally suggests contrasts, as in the methods of the police and the criminals. It is in indicating just the opposite that his cross-cutting is most imaginative. The alternating shots of the meeting of the city officials and that of the criminals, with a couple of verbal bridges, establish the similarities between the ideas, approaches, and even personalities of the two groups. We continue to be aware of these parallels (and contrasts) as we observe cross-cutting between the two organizations in operation.
Another device that helps to coalesce visually the elements of the film is the visual motif. This can be defined as a shape or object that reappears a number of times in a film and assumes a symbolic significance beyond its denotative meaning. In other words, it is a visual symbol. The word motif, however, emphasizes repetition of the image and suggests that the director, like a composer of music, by changing the context in which the image appears and even its contours can mold and create variations in our conscious and unconscious associations with a specific image. The most significant visual motifs in M are the circle, the mirror, and the knife.
The opening shot of the film is of children in a circle; in the second unit of cross-cutting (sequence IV) we see a shot of a map of the city with three circles of different sizes sharing as a common center the spot where Elsie Beckmann's body was found; there is a broken circle of children around an organ grinder (sequence VII ); the table in Hans Beckert's room, sequence VIII, seen from above, is oval; and in the window displays in sequence VIII there are circles and variations of circles (most prominently a diamond display of knives and a circle with a spiral design ) .
The circle in the film is a multifaceted symbol, but primarily it suggests either danger from the Murderer or what threatens him. He is surrounded by children and chooses one by chance as in the children's game. He is also encircled by enemies, both the police and the underworld, closing in on him. As the film progresses, the circle becomes transformed in our minds into a tightening noose.
The first appearance of the mirror motif is in the second unit of crosscutting when we see a shot of the Murderer making faces in a mirror. As we pointed out in our analysis of sequence IV, the mirror in this case symbolizes the duality of Hans Beckert. In a mirror Beckert as Murderer is presented. In fact, every time Beckert looks in a mirror the reflection is somehow involved with the Murderer. When he observes the first window display in sequence VIII, the glass acts as a mirror and reflects an image of knives surrounding his head. These knives do not threaten the apple-eating Beckert but the Murderer within him. A moment later he sees the little girl in the mirror in the display case: the obsession of the Murderer appears almost magically. Finally, it is in a mirror that he sees the "M" on his back that labels him the Murderer.
As with the circle, the knife motif represents danger to the Murderer in one form and danger to the children in another. We mentioned previously the reflection of the knives threatening the Murderer. In the very next shot, however, the mirror in which the little girl's image appears is surrounded by these knives. It is this latter type of association that further variations of the knife motif develop.
A knife can be a murder weapon that penetrates innocent flesh. In the second window display the most striking object is a spinning circle with a spiral design and a large arrow whose shadow, from one perspective, as it moves up and down, appears to penetrate the spiral. The girl, who is soon met by her mother, is fascinated by the mechanism. We see the Murderer's own knife later when he is with another youngster just before he is branded with an "M."
Nowhere in the film is it stated that the Murderer sexually molests his victims. However, the sexual overtones of the circle-arrow window display and the position of the switchblade knife in relation to the body of the Murderer when he snaps it open in front of the second child suggest to us, if only subconsciously, that the Murderer's obsession is primarily sexual.
The final appearance of the knife motif occurs when the Murderer attempts to use his knife to open the door to the loft. He breaks the blade and is helpless. We notice that it is his tapping with the handle of the knife that betrays his presence and leads to his capture.
Thus far we have been dealing with specific techniques in M; now we will turn to two general approaches that influence the tone of the film as a whole.
Probably the most often repeated criticism of Lang as a director is his "coldness," a quality of keeping a distance between himself and the feelings of his characters. This does not mean that he is incapable of achieving dramatic intensity, but that his camera seems always detached, the objective observer, functioning intellectually rather than emotionally.
In M, however, this detachment works to the advantage of the film. Until the last sequence, the film appears to be almost a documentary. Documentaries can reveal with insight and passion the feelings of people, as directors from Flaherty to Frederick Wiseman have demonstrated. Generally, though, the emphasis in a documentary is on process—how things happen—rather than on the why of human emotions.
Most of M is devoted to describing visually how the police proceed, how the criminals operate, how a bar is raided by the police and an office building by the criminals. A few moments of the film illustrate in miniature this documentary approach: when we follow the mechanical process set in motion by a watchman pulling the alarm (sequence X) .
The most poignant sequence in the film—Mrs. Beckmann waiting for Elsie—ends before the mother learns that her daughter has been killed. We never actually see the Murderer hurt a child. We learn little of the personal life of any of the characters. As we pointed out earlier, even in the cafe where the Murderer drinks brandy and struggles with his obsession, the camera keeps its distance behind a barrier of leaves. All of this prevents us from becoming too involved in personalities.
There are a number of reasons that could be offered to justify this encouragement of a viewer's objectivity. The major theme of the film is the need of the forces of order and authority to contain or destroy dangerous impulses toward irrationality. We must be made aware of authority in operation to recognize this theme, with just enough attention given to representative personalities—Lohmann and Schranker—to hold our interest. The same holds true, although to a lesser degree, for the forces of irrationality presented in sequence III: "Accusations in a Cafe, a Home, and on the Street." The source of this anarchy, the Murderer himself, must also be kept at a distance. If we saw directly the details of his violence, we might lose any incipient sympathy for him; then the argument that he should not be held responsible for his action would be less persuasive.
There is also a structural justification for Lang only hinting at the Murderer's inner conflict until near the end. Beckert's confession in the last sequence is the dramatic climax of the film. One of the reasons this scene is so intense and moving is that for the first time we penetrate to the inner world of the Murderer.
Finally, there is evidence in the script of how consciously Lang and Thea von Harbou sought to make their characters abstract. Hans Beckert, except when the police are tracing him, is never referred to except as "Murderer" (a practice we have adhered to in this analysis) . Most of the characters in the film script are designated by generic names, such as Chief of Police, Burglar, Night Watchman, Prostitute. Only nine out of more than two dozen individual roles (ignoring groups of children, citizens, police, and criminals ) are named.
A use of generic names is a characteristic of German expressionism. This leads us—imitating in the progress of our discussion Lang's cinematic transitions in M from one sequence to another—to the influence of expressionism on M. Elsewhere we discussed how this movement affected film makers, particularly German ones in the 1920s and 1930s, both in the content and cinematic techniques of their films. In both respects M is not basically an expressionistic film; however, it does borrow from the movement. The following are examples of influences on the content of the film. The reference to generic rather than proper names reflects an emphasis on types rather than individuals, on the essential rather than the personal. This was a device, especially in drama, often used by the expressionists. The city in M is oppressed by structures and forces that dehumanize people—a major theme of the movement. The Murderer is mentally ill, a type of character that fascinated cinematic expressionists, especially after The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. On the other hand, there is little opportunity in the plot, with the exception of the monologue confession, to present the Murderer's vision of reality with the subjectivity and highly charged emotion that is a hallmark of expressionism.
We find the echoes of expressionism in M more in cinematic techniques than in content. As we have noted, the chief manifestation of the movement in cinematic technique was in distortions of reality, actual and symbolic, to express the emotions of characters, particularly those beneath the surface of consciousness. Also used were stylized settings, shadows and dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and shots, reflections, and abrupt or even disorienting cuts from one shot to another. In M there are shadows, unusual camera angles, and reflections. Lang does not, however, apply these techniques to reveal in a specific scene the deepest levels of emotion (except for the reflection in the first storewindow display in sequence VIII), but rather to create the atmosphere of danger and mystery.
We have already discussed how repeated overhead shots, particularly in streets, result in an effect of claustrophobia and a sense of the dehumanization of people in a world governed by impersonal forces. Ominous shadows frequently appear in M. There is the Murderer's shadow when he talks to Elsie and when he is with the other girl and passes the Blind Beggar selling balloons. The police raid on The Crocodile is made more dramatic, especially at the beginning of the scene, by the presence of dark masses and shadows. At the end of the meeting of criminals in sequence VI, Schranker's shadow looms up on the wall.
The place in M where one might expect cinematic expressionistic techniques is in the Murderer's monologue confession. In photographing the confession, however, Lang does no more than move his camera into close-ups, high-angle shots, and cuts from shots to the right and left of the Murderer. This is not to say that expressionistic distortion could have made the scene more effective. Considering the over-all tone of the film, Lang probably made the correct choice.
We have dwelled on this topic because so many critics refer to "the expressionistic elements in M" without defining what they mean. Although the characteristics of the movement are debatable, in our opinion this film contains the shadow, not the substance, of cinematic expressionism.
Whatever the virtues or defects of M, it has transcended the age in which it was created (no mean compliment for any film—or any work of art, for that matter) and still fascinates both the general viewer and the student of the history of cinema.