1931: M - How Cinema Asks a Difficult Question. 

"We never feel sympathy for him." I'm not so sure. The monologue by Hans Beckert about how he is a tortured soul, with a force or other "being" inside of him - almost akin to Golem's character in LOTR (of which I definitely seen stylistic/characteristic similarities between) - I think Lang was presenting the case of how powerful criminal compulsion is in the extreme case. And by consequence, presenting a merciful case, not in defence of his crimes, but in defence of the idea of keeping him alive. I found it hard not to feel sympathise with the seemingly authentic, visceral acceptance of what he really is. I guess sympathy is in the eye of the beholder, and whether you can divorce your own visceral emotion from objective reality/mental reality - ironically of which, Hans Beckert was unable to do...

For such a small channel, this channel has such high quality

Great video. The shot at 3:53 is one of my favorites in film. The reflected knives surrounding his head symbolize thoughts of murder plaguing his mind. The camera work in this entire movie is so creative. Remarkable film!

The last scene with the mothers is also chilling

I always thought that the last line in the film "We also must protect our children" spoken by a grieving mother (wearing a dark shroud, giving her the aspect of a fate or muse) might also be interpreted as our collective consciousness telling us that as a society we must also protect our 'children', in other words, people like the Peter Lorre character, by affording them their due rights.

I think it's significant that the child murderer is first caught and tried by the underworld, not the average citizens. In the end, they are all busted together.

I'm surprised you didn't mention Peter Kürten (the "Vampire of Düsseldorf") as one of the inspirations for M.

I just absolutely love to learn about history as well as film and this channel hits those two marks amazingly well. Keep up the great work I hope your channel becomes even more popular.

One of the greatest movies (ahead of the time) of all time The message still resonates more than 75 years after its release This weekend I was watching TCM and they had a showing of M To my surprise this was a remake (holly wood version) and could not have been more awful than you can imagine Hint to holly wood leave the foreign classics alone

Awesome video on an awesome movie!

You really shouldn't have sprung that Buñuel eyeball on people without warning.

I love your series and thank you for including "M". It still gives me chills after seeing it several times over a 50 year span. Again, thank you and keep up the great work you are doing.

Amazing! I absolutely love all your video essays, keep up the good work!

I have been recommending your channel to all my cinephile friends. Your grasp of history and your grasp of film history/theory is superb. This is an extraordinary resource. I hope once you have finished your 100 Years that you will branch out and keep making videos. I thoroughly enjoy them.

Hey, this was truly terrific. Any conversation about M always piques my interest and this was very well done. Thank you for the shoutout at the end, also. Appreciate that!

this movie is one of the few movies from 30s and before that has actually risen in the sight and sound list... this shows how timeless this movie is

Dude, thank you so much. Watching this has helped me out with a reflection paper I'm writing. You're channel is awesome!

Great video. I look forward to each one of your vids. Fritz Langs Scarlett Street is one of my top 5 favourite films of all time

I'm late to the game to your channel but when I did find it, I instantly subscribed this is top tier film dissection.

Great video and your summary of the film M is superb. The "asking us a question" mindset, indeed! In fact, we all have to ask ourselves how a serial killer would be defined, how he does it, why he has his motives and what he does to peoples´ childrens. M was the beginning of Film Noir. It started in the early 1940s and ended in the 50s. Anyway, keep on making more videos!

Excellent work keep it up!!

OMYGOSH I LOVE HOW THIS POPPED UP ON MY RECOMMENDATIONS! BEST FIND EVER!

I rarely subscribe to a channel but your commentaries are so impressive that I had no idea how young you are . It's because of this I believe you make these videos out of the love of film as opposed to just merely overly intellectualize movies you may have an understanding of merely because you were taught well.

Wow what a great analysis! Your very talented thank you for sharing! 🙌🏾🙏🏾

Thanks for this :) Always valuable content, I love it.

what a great video study. you just found yourself an avid fan and subscriber. great work.

Just found this channel and I love it!

It really is unfortunate that this channel is currently dormant. Here’s hoping there will be more material in the future.

Great content. Your channel deserve more attention !

Very good synopsis and analysis of 'M', which is an exceptional early example of a crime-thriller.

Thank you for your time.

As well as the man who laughed I wonder if M was also used as inspiration for the character of the joker from DC comics.

I love this channel

Quality content my friend keep it up and you’ll soon go big!

Just watched the film today for the first time and your video was a welcome view

good stuff!

I like seeing how the killer effects the town, rather than seeing the killer himself.

Great analysis

How does this channel not have more subscribers

Your analisis is very well made. Remember: the film is ALSO about how the structure of SOCIETY (Police vs. Underworld) is put topsy-turvy by the random action of a disturbed but ultimately 'free' INDIVIDUAL. And how this wiil not be tollerated. Personally I found THIS commentary by Lang the most interesting and pertinent. A sick man's mind may be fascinating...but SOCIETY's reaction to instability is even more amazing. Thankyou!

My favorite all time film.

yet another exceptional work of essay Sir! now that we finally escaped the topic of Universal Ghouls and Goblins and we can focus on sound thrillers and more. cannot wait for the next videos as we step closer and closer towards modern film. although now that i think about it... i guess 100 is a good stopping point for this series to change subject or media area. it is afterall a ceaseless sea of media that only needs a fair amount of good analyzing without overdoing it. and since we have more than 100 years in our memory to title of film. will you be stopping at 1988 or 2015? according to the math attributed to your first two videos? before either retiring or eventually changing or evolutionizing this channel's future content.

Excellent video

Such an engaging series

I love this movie. I was just talking about it the other day to a friend and a couple of my (adult) kids.

Incredible amount of smoking in M. The men were thinking.

I watch and rewatch M . Its not only Lang who is on fire here ....Peter Lorre bring pathos to a wretched monster ....And the false outrage and pride of killers and thieves as they try to separate themselves from Becķett ...they only cared when their status quo was interupted .

Fritz Lang was not Jewish. It's true that his mother was Jewish but she had converted to Catholicism before Lang was born and Lang was brought up as a Catholic and very much considered himself a Catholic, his full name was Friedrich CHRISTIAN Anton Lang! It's also true that having some Jewish heritage was enough to make you vulnerable to persecution by the Nazis but that doesn't change the fact that Lang was not Jewish, by any reasonable measure, and certainly did not consider himself Jewish. It's also worth noting that his wife at the time, who actually co-wrote the screenplay of "M", was sympathetic to the Nazis and eventually became a member of the Nazi Party.

"Astonishing" is indeed the word.

Really good video. I teach film & will use this next year. I show M at the beginning of each class, and without fail, at the end of the school year students vote it their first or second favorite film-

What I like about M is that it says, "should you kill a man for something he can't control?" - Versus - "you should kill a man over something he can't control."

This movie was really good I think it’s really one of the best

Oh, geez. I was so not prepared for that clip from Un Chien Andalou at the start of the video.

Lang set the futuristic bar. He was the Kubrick of his time.

Later,Lorre Dubbed his voice in English for the German Film.

The head gangster's hand movements are very familiar.

Like the "utilitarian" aspects you mentioned ... hadn't thought of it in that sense before .-) ... classic cinema, Langs second best :-)

Damn dude. How bout a content warning on that Adelusuian Dog?

awesome movie!

From which movies are the initial shots taken?

Ngl i was kinda cheering for the mafia

This was my great grandfather's and great uncle's film (the producers Henry and Seymour Nebenzahl of Nero Film). They were Americans living in Germany. The film is a masterpiece.

There is a newer version that was done in the 1950's, but this is much "darker"

Truly relevant today, maybe even more as extreme opinions on social media are becoming the norm. Since the film is of public domain, i found it easily on RU-vid, and I was surprised to see the owner of the channel it was on shared a lot of french right-winged nationnalist propaganda and conspiracy theories of all kind. It get to my impression that "M" is used by some people as a piece of evidence for their ideology instead of being one that ask a question with no right or wrong answer.

He doesn't control his actions, but he could seek for help, he could go to psychologist/psychiatrist.

M is my favorite thriller of all

I recently watched the film and I think the real question the film was asking “what kind of society are we in right now?”

good video, but you need to improve your audio recording and mixing, compressing the dynamic range on your vocal track and normalizing it would easily improve the audio

There's no Patreon page link? :(

you let me love this movie bro

Very pertinent examination of a sub genre of film

Excellent essay on an groundbreaking film. And you pointed out some really important details (like the use of sound) we were taught in Cinema classes when we studied German Expressionism and this film. And all the moral questions this film creates along with the spectacular acting talent of Lorre, give something I feel nowdays movies lack of and when they try to show some of it people go insane naming them the movie of the century and all. Little do they know there are films about 100 years ago that have done that better. The only little thing I would like to correct in the video is about Lang being Jewish. Lang was an Austrian and even though his mother came from a Jewish family indeed, she was baptized and so was he. Jewish connect religion to be called Jewish, so, an overall Austrian and Roman Catholic that even when he gradually loses faith in God never loses the elements of christianic religion he was raised with, can't really be called Jewish. Even if I see your point in how you use this argument. In Lorre's case which was Hungarian but from Jewish family, I agree more that pointing out some connection with the Jewish label when it comes to that period of time when people were hunted for that makes it more meaningful. I just feel that generalizing and labeling some specific people with a label they don't really follow is a little unfitting. But that was a tiny detail I overanalyzed maybe, as a person that has studied a lot on Lang, and it doesn't change how great the video is.

Very cool video. Having the option “D. Be sentenced to life in prison.” is the world in which I would like to live.

Interesting. I totally didn't get that detail when I first saw it, I just saw it as a film that confronted the German people with the idea that one of their neighbours could be a child murderer, and that that may have been an alarming idea. At various times in my life I've seen a film come out that proposes an alarming thing that could potentially happen, and then other copycat films come out about the same idea. At one point in the 90s it was meteors striking earth. I kind of thought that the film toned it down a bit by not also having the character rape the children.

What piece is the violin from starting around :45? I've had that in my head for years but I can't find it.

I think you left a comment to me about getting people to believe you. Interesting you chose Cinema here. I was just discussing with someone WHY Hitchcocks movies were so scary! it wasn’t necessarily Just the Storyline with Hitchcock. I have been in a family working in the movie industry and music industry that goes back more than 58 years. I learned how Hitchcock played subconsciously with peoples minds, by ingeniously understanding the rules of filming so perfectly, he stepped out of those rules with disturbing framing, angles, and lighting. Most un suspecting people could not figure out why his style was so disturbing. Some True artists in the industry understood the genius of this, which made him a legend. This technique works with every art form and sets those who realize this apart from other artists. But knowing what I heard about him over the years, and having blown it off as gossip, I see clearly, he was a sick and twisted man, with psychopathic tendencies. When telling others about what is going in with Mc Cain, I refer them to C Span where I watched Lindsay Graham say it in live testimony. maybe if you go on youtube and look up Congressional confirmation testimony on Cavanaugh (sp) /Lindsay Graham/x examination, it will show up, if it hasnt been scrubbed. I have since seen him say it openly on other shows, but not sure which. usually when I watch CSpan, Then I tell people I saw it live streaming from Congress, that ends the dispute right there!!! In videos you see, open the description box below the video. If its a reputable person, most of the time they put the source links there. so many times, by following the links, they lead back to “whitehouse.gov and the transcripts became available through the freedom of information act! Thats the best way to know who to follow, unless they have already earned a huge credibility factor in their reporting, and no one doubts them, but I say they should always name sources! otherwise they are not Journalists, but Opinion people. even Sean Hannity says “I am not a Journalist, I get paid for my opinion! Tucker says that too. in my opinion only, that makes them the best “Journalists” on TV!!! IRONY! haha!!!! thanks for responding. Good luck to you! and by the way, some trusted sites I like are Praying Medic, John B Wells, New show weekly with “Good Dog”, X22 report. and check out Patriots Soapbox 24/7 live Radio show. It is all patriots. they all work for free! The saying WWG1WGA originated there! look in their description box! scroll down past the advertising. each segment begins with prayer. Non denominational. See “The Star Spangled Banner as you’ve Never Heard It Before” Cheers, Friend. 🌟 scuse the bad grammar! in a hurry.

In which film was the scene where the eye was cut off

Fantastic movie

Nice use of the classical music, my dude.

What I love about _M_ is that the villain, while tragic, is still a sadistic child murderer. The police are stymied by their own laws, their own restrictions, unable to fight for what's right because they had no evidence, and a criminal underground, ruthless in their hunt and eventual capture. The Law wants the men who capture M, while the criminals want M because he's everything that they are against; killing and violating children. There is no good. The Law is corrupt. They're clearly failures. The mobsters are clearly our hate against the criminal, but their hate is not law. And the murder himself is troubled, yet a nasty man.

Saw the movie (and of corse your video) and absolutly liked it. Reason, because answers are sometimes really difficult. If someone would kill my son... I don't know what I would do and yet I think mental illness is a real thing. Justice should not be spoken by the victims. But the end of the movie was also very touching. So... i really liked to see the different point of views and that this is a problem to anyone involved

I feel this video didn't really justify the detail of the film. Part of the question of the film was "Who are the worse demons?" because the people you stated who gave the child killer his kangaroo court were mainly criminals who have also killed men, women and children, but for different reasons. They were criminals, but they weren't mentally ill. They didn't even care about the fact that this man was a child killer, but more for the fact that it was interfering with their criminal lives because they were constantly being accused and harassed by the police since one of them could "potentially be the child killer"

M is one of best Classics film

I liked how you laid out the outline. My feeling is that he showed that he knew right from wrong. Read this prototype for the murderer. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_K%C3%BCrten

The eyeball slice makes me cringe every time 😭😭😭

Another question, relevant to the time in which the film was made but more settled upon now was the question of what to do with a person whose nature is at odds with the public will. It is in his nature to kill and he cannot help it as he says, which could be considered a parallel to the type of racist perceptions of social darwinist thinking that was a characteristic of Nazi Germany. Films in this period are considered a premonition of future Germany and this could be an example as germans asked the question of what to do with Jews whose immorality was considered to be a product of their nature as Jews. Safecracker, near the end of the underground trial says they should "obliterate" them. I don't know if anyone else agrees, but I saw a parallel between their mob hysteria and future German perceptions of people they considered a threat to Germany.

City Lights was the way better film of that year.

YO ITS THE EMESIS BLUE MOVIE

Jesus dude at least put a warning up before showing someone's eye being sliced open with a razor

We all control our own actions. If you cant control your own actions then that's when the law and the people have the power to make decisions for you.

-M-

You are very cute Charlie and keep up the good work.

I think that leather jacket is from matrix

Then you must take control of them for him...otherwise he kills again.....

Killing a kiddie murderer is not utilitarian

Permanent jail

This is a very good analysis BUT it ignores some of the context, which was that overwhelmingly German audiences saw "M" as a good argument on favour of capital punishment. This was the reason Jospeh Goebbels admired the film (coupled with the fact that the child-murderer is played by a Jewish actor). Please note, too, that Goebbels admired "Metropolis" because he saw it as arguing for an end to Marxist ideas of class warfare. Remember, at the end of "Metropolis" the "heart" (i.e. popular feeling, which Goebbels saw as meaning the Nazi party) brings together the "hand" (oppressed industrial workers) and the "brain" (wealthy industrialists). Therefore, no need for class warfare. QED. We can, and might, draw quite different messages from these two great films but, regrettably, we can never assume that our interpretation is the only conclusion that can be drawn. Incidentally, though Lang made some quite good films in the USA ("Fury" etc.), I believe he never again hit the heights he had reached in Germany. BTW, Lang's wife - and co-scripter - at the time these two films were made was Thea von Harbou, a member of the Nazi party. Oh dear!

Beckmann tries to conceal his crimes by taking victims to remote locations and killing them; Beckmann taunts the community through letters to the newspaper; Beckmann doesn't seek treatment or kill himself; Beckmann targets children not women his own age or older?

i think most people would say he needs psychiatric help, he should be locked up or to execute him. id say if hes seeking help and has committed no crime then get him help, but after he commits the crime the judgment should be swift and he should be permanently prevented from doing harm again. by what means this is achieved are less important to me.

Lang was Catholic, his mom was Jewish and converted.