Vintage

Yes, that’s right, it’s called “M”, like the letter. This film might be a departure of sorts for this site – I know it was somewhat of a departure for me to just watch it – but it is a “cool” film so why not have it on coolfilmz?           

Made in 1931 by Fritz Lang M is a German film but is conveniently subtitled for people like me who don’t speak a word of German except for the occasion Rammstein lyric. My understanding is that this film was made around the time that silent films were on the way out but “talkies”, and the technology required to make them, we’re not quite widespread. Due to those factors, this movie was filmed without sound – or at least with very little sound – and then dialog and what not were all added later.

This was actually handled quite ingeniously by Lang who used a lot of shadowed and otherwise obscured faces when a person was speaking. Seemed kind of cool to me but technical mumbo-jumbo aside, this is what happens in the film that makes it worth watching and I would have to say makes it worth of QUEEN status if not better.

At the outset of the film we see a group of children playing in a circle singing some sort of children’s song about a murderer. One of the children is then bouncing a ball off a sign offering a reward for the capture of a murderer who is on the loose. A shadowy, whistling figure then emerges from off screen and takes the little girl to buy a balloon from the blind balloon salesman (we k now he’s blind because, oddly, there is a sign around his neck stating that fact in plain English). This is the last we see of the girl who is the eight child gone missing. A state of slight paranoia takes hold of the town and only grows when the police are sans reliable clues even after combing the woods and performing handwriting analysis on a letter the killer sent to the newspaper warning that he’s “not done yet.”

No real headway is made into the investigation until a coalition of petty crooks decides to take matters into their own heads out of worry that they will be wrongly lumped in with the murderer. They decide that they need informers to help them try to catch the murderer and who makes a more trustworthy informer than a beggar. But even the beggars are having trouble finding this guy until the blind, balloon selling guy recognizes the creepy, Kill Bill-esque tune he heard from the customer of his who bought the balloon just before the last child disappeared. The blind guy quickly notifies a nearby beggar who them begins following the suspect. The beggar writes the letter M on his hand in chalk and pats the suspect on the back as he passes by so all the other beggars can identify the suspected murderer and capture him. They corner him in an office building of some kind and then abscond away with him to a warehouse where it is apparent that the murderer will be lynched and killed despite his claims of insanity and desire to be given a fair trial. As usual, I don’t want to give away the whole ending but it’s kind of left open for interpretation anyway, as the police enter the warehouse seemingly before the other beggars and criminals can bring the child-murderer to their own form of justice.

So that’s it: different, foreign, subtitled and in black and white but still very good. I’m always impressed, perhaps incorrectly, to see a really well made film from a long time ago because I assume we are more advanced now and thus capable of consistently overshadowing old movies. I have to admit, though, that this one proven me wrong. It might be a hard to find at your local video store, but if you stumble across M, check it out.