Quartile rating: 8.5/10 · 1 rating
In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.
M is one of cinema's defining masterworks. Fritz Lang's plot is a marvel of structural ingenuity — interweaving police procedural, criminal underworld, and psychological portrait with ruthless economy. Peter Lorre's performance as Beckert is electrifying and career-defining, conveying both menace and pathetic vulnerability in equal measure. The cinematography is expressionist perfection: shadow, framing, and sound (its innovative use of off-screen audio and the first major use of sound as a narrative device) set the template for noir and thriller cinema for decades. Its novelty is almost unparalleled — in 1931 it synthesized expressionism, documentary realism, psychoanalysis, and social critique into something that had never existed before. The kangaroo-court ending is chilling and thematically rich, but its abruptness and the tacked-on courtroom coda feel slightly unresolved, keeping it from a perfect mark in that category.