#94 M - So there IS honor among thugs...

1931. dir. Fritz Lang, starring Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut. German with subtitles.

Seen it before? No.

Peter Lorre is creepy and in this movie it suits him to a T. He is a child murderer who is on the loose and the cops and the bad guys are both after him. Wait, the bad guys are after him? You read right. They are tired of the frequent raids on their endeavors and are, in general, disgusted that they are being associated with someone who would murder children...so they set up a network of street beggars to help find the guy.

I was rather impressed with the splicing of the meeting of the police and the meeting of the crime bosses. It was pretty entertaining. The last major scene with the criminals was pretty entertaining too. I don't want to say too much because I really do think you should watch this movie but I will share my favorite interaction during that scene... the lead "prosecutor" for the bad guys gets questioned by the lead "defense" attorney -
"defense attorney": "My learned colleague who just spoke...who is, if I'm not mistaken, wanted by the police on three counts of manslaughter..."
"Lead prosecutor": "That's irrelevant here."

See it again? Sure
Own it? Why not?
Moral of the story - watch your kids...don't let them just wander off and make sure you teach them to be wary of strangers!
To Sam - I feel like I'm writing f*ing reading records for my Children's Lit course first semester....I HATED writing READING RECORDS!!!!

#94 M: He'll make mincemeat out of you!

1931. dir. Fritz Lang, starring Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut. German with subtitles.

Seen it before? No.



"M" is for "Murderer", or whatever the German word for Murderer is. There's a depraved child killer (Peter Lorre) on the loose, and he's making everyone anxious and paranoid. (Although not quite paranoid enough; people still seem fine with letting their children walk home unsupervised.) The police have responded by instituting random raids and searches, which is making life difficult for the local crime syndicate. So they have a meeting, and decide they are going to capture him themselves. I'm not sure how much sense this plan makes. Suppose they capture him and kill him, which is what they wanted to do - wouldn't the police still be looking for the killer? So It's a race to see who captures him first, the police or the criminals. The police use CSI: 1930's Germany techniques: fingerprinting, evidence gathering, handwriting analysis, and the like. The criminals hire the beggars (who are surprisingly well organized) as an army of informants.

This is a great movie. Peter Lorre is terribly creepy as the killer who doesn't quite understand what he's doing. This movie is at times suspenseful, and darkly funny.

Position on the list: 56
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