M (1931) on Netflix
A child killer has Berlin on edge and the police cannot catch him. Police raids ruin the rackets of the city's criminals, and Inspector Karl Lohmann's manhunt gains a rival.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb8.3/10184,442 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Children in a Berlin apartment block chant a rhyme about a child-killer while Frau Beckmann sets the table for her daughter Elsie, who does not come home from school. Wanted posters are up, and anxious parents wait outside the school gates. The killer writes to the newspapers, claiming the murders and promising more, and the police pull the letter apart for fingerprints and handwriting. Inspector Karl Lohmann, who leads the homicide squad, has his men look into patients recently released from psychiatric care and orders raids across the city. The raids cripple organized crime, so Der Schränker calls Berlin's gang bosses together. They agree to mount a manhunt of their own.
Cast
- Friedrich Gnaßas Franz
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about M (1931)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While researching M, Fritz Lang spent eight days inside a German mental institution and met child murderers including Peter Kürten; he used real criminals as extras, and 25 cast members were arrested during the film's shooting.
- Fritz Lang showed no on-screen violence or child deaths in M, saying that by merely suggesting violence he forced each member of the audience to imagine the gruesome details of the murder for themselves.
- M was one of the first films to use a leitmotif, borrowed from opera: 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' from Grieg's Peer Gynt is tied to Peter Lorre's character, and later just hearing the tune tells the audience he is nearby.
- M's Berlin underworld is based on the real Ringvereine gangs, including their board of directors, charismatic master criminal and support for imprisoned members' families; the office-building break-in was inspired by the 1929 Disconto Bank robbery by the Sass brothers gang.
- Critics have called M based on the serial killer Peter Kürten, the 'Vampire of Düsseldorf', but Fritz Lang denied it in a 1963 interview, saying many serial killers — Haarmann, Großmann, Kürten, Denke — were terrorizing Germany at the time.
- M was Peter Lorre's first major starring role and made his career, though it typecast him as a villain for years afterward in films such as Mad Love and Crime and Punishment; before M he had been mostly a comedic actor.
- M is referenced in 'In Germany Before the War', a song by the American songwriter Randy Newman on his 1977 album Little Criminals.
