# M (1931)

### reviewed by
Steve Lipson

    M (1931)
    A film review by Steve Lipson

M: A warning against totalitarianism?

Fritz Lang's M was made in 1931, in a Germany witnessing the rapid growth of the Nazi party. When I first saw the movie, I took it to be an ominous foreshadowing of the dangers of a totalitarian state, where mob violence against undesirables is rampant and the authorities ruthlessly put the supposed good of society over people's individual freedoms. The incredibly bleak view of Berlin which Fritz Lang depicts in the movie could let me see it no other way. It was clear, at least at first glance, that the audience was to react with disgust at the oppressive tactics the police employ to catch the child murderer, measures that make the city of Berlin a most unpleasant place to live. I thought the movie perhaps may even have reflected Lang's horror at the Nazi party--a disgust reflected in 1933 when, after Goebbels offered to make him head of the German film industry, he chose to flee the country instead.

But my certainty of this interpretation as an accurate meaning of the film began to change somewhat on second viewing. My earlier attitude was in part shaped by my perception that the police's high-handed and dictatorial tactics to investigate the murders were getting nowhere, and that their obsessive search of one particular house was barking up the wrong tree. But on second viewing, I changed my mind and began to believe that the house they had under close surveillance was in fact that of the killer (Peter Lorre). A check of the Internet Movie Database character names confirmed that. Now, suddenly, my original views of M as a warning against totalitarianism came into question; after all, one could make the claim from the movie that the police's oppressive tactics were effective and ultimately for the good of society.

My uncertainty as to M's meaning was heightened when I started to think more of the creative forces behind the movie. Clearly, its director Lang (whose mother was Jewish) held strongly anti-Nazi views. But the screenplay of M was co-written by Lang's wife Thea von Harbou, who herself was (or would become) a dedicated Nazi and would divorce Lang over the matter. Thus, the question was raised in my mind over whether it would be legitimate to believe a Nazi would have written a story with anti-totalitarian overtones, as I had first though M was.

Maybe then the answer to my question ultimately has to do with the different roles of the director and the screenwriter. Von Harbou may well not have intended her original screenplay to reflect negatively on the tactics of Nazism; thus, she portrayed the repressive methods of the police as ultimately effective. But in handing in the screenplay, she turned over control of the final direction of the movie to the director; M as we have it now thus reflects Lang's, not von Harbou's, ultimate vision. And by Lang's claustrophobic directing and heavy use of shadows, he may have in fact intended to undercut the message of the screenplay and make Berlin of the 1930's in fact to seem ominously sinister and oppressive. For this reason, my initial impression of the movie may have been correct: no matter what minor points may cast the impression otherwise, Lang had succeeded--via the overall tone and message of the movie--to make M a warning against the totalitarianism into which Germany was threatening to descend.

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews