M

M is a 1931 German film directed by Fritz Lang, his first with sound, with Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert, who is killing children in the city. The police response disrupts ordinary criminal business so severely that the underworld organises its own search, finds Beckert before the police do, and puts him before an improvised tribunal in a disused factory. Sound carries much of the storytelling: a phrase from Grieg's Peer Gynt that Beckert whistles becomes the means of identifying him, and dialogue frequently runs across cuts between scenes. Sequences of the police and of the criminals in conference are intercut against each other in parallel. Lorre had worked mainly in the theatre, and this was his first major screen role.

Mainland China

M就是凶手

Hong Kong

M

Taiwan

M

English

M

Original

M

• Peter Lorreas Hans Beckert