As Fritz Lang’s first film using sound, the silent screen’s influence on M is obvious. The horror of the faces- an integral part to the film- and what the audience sees within the frame weighs significantly more in the story than what is heard. Lang was already a successful director with silent films including Metropolis, that I have a framed poster of in my room, bringing him worldwide recognition. Addressing, most obviously, themes of anonymity within crowds and mob mentalities M is a film that still holds relevance in modern society.
After class, I chose to watch this film again. Upon re-watch, Lang’s hatred for what Germany was becoming was obvious. There are the rich men smoking together discussing the…show more content… As Janey Place and Lowell Peterson wrote in “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir”, one of the most recognizable features of noir is the lighting and shadows. M has this in bounds. Hans Beckert leads the children into the darkness he himself embraces, the beggars trailing him in the last act move in the behind and around him in the darkness, just out of his peripheral vision, like a ghost. There is no hero, nor is there a femme fatale. The characters are not tempted into their fate, but have already been given their sentence before the start of the film. There is no “set up” of the events, per se: Beckert is already a child murderer, the gangsters are already gangsters, and the beggars were beggars long before the film began. In that sense, you feel no sympathy for any fate they might encounter in the future: all the audience knows of all the characters is them as they are, not before. All the characters are “shadowy”. The symbolism of shadow isn’t limited to only the visual realm- in Beckert’s monologue in front of the kangaroo court, he shouts “I have to roam the streets endlessly, always sensing that someone is following me. It’s me! I’m shadowing
