M

Stories about serial killers are not my favorite kind of book to read or film to see. As a young journalist, I had a difficult time investigating and writing about a real-life serial killer. Beyond the gruesome details of his crimes, it was hard for me to experience first-hand the intense pain and suffering that also destroyed the families of his victims. So, I am unsettled when serial-killer stories do little more than exploit their crimes as mere entertainment without at any attempt at some deeper insight or meaning.

Fortunately, there are some books and movies about serial killers that reach far above that low bar. One movie that ranks both as an emotionally intelligent serial-killer drama and as a classic is the 1931 German film called M. That’s the title. Just the letter M, as in “murderer.” It’s generally regarded as the film that gave birth to the serial killer genre.

The story was inspired by a real-life serial killer whose crimes terrorized the German city of Dusseldorf years earlier, but its treatment here is highly fictionalized. Set in Berlin, children are being killed. A murderer is on the prowl. While the city holds its breath, fearing where and when the killer will strike next, the police have no leads. Desperate, they crack down on the Berlin underworld, arresting thieves, pickpockets, gangs—anyone who might help lead them to a break in the case.

Anxious to get the police off their backs, the Berlin underworld decides to organize. The sooner the serial killer can be caught, the sooner their illicit businesses can get back to normal. So, they unleash their shadowy network of criminals to hunt for the killer themselves.

Peter Lorre is riveting.

As the child killer, actor Peter Lorre is riveting. In a haunting speech that you won’t soon forget, he cries in anguish as he confesses to the compulsions that drive him to kill. His performance here launched his brilliant career as a Hollywood character actor in such films as Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.

The other star is director Fritz Lang, regarded as the greatest German director of the period, perhaps best known for his landmark sci-fi movie Metropolis.  A master of visual storytelling, Lang never shows the killings in M, yet he makes us feel the horror of them. He uses his camera to paint a chilling portrait of a 1930s Berlin caught in the grip of one man’s reign of madness.

Finally, it’s the menacing backdrop against which M was actually produced that resonates most profoundly. In the year the film was made, the Nazis were ascending to power, poisoning all facets of German life. Lang’s film is filled with metaphors for his dread of what was happening and of the murderer who would soon become president—Germany’s next real-life mass killer, Adolf Hitler.

M is a dark, captivating four-star masterpiece.