M and The Story of Criminals and Police Chasing a Murderous Pedophile.

M (1931) The Criterion Collection Poster

Summary: 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.

Synopsis & My review     : (Warning, might contain spoilers)

Just you wait, it won’t be long

The man in black will soon be here

With his Cleaver’s blade so true

He will make mincemeat out of you!

That is a song, sung by little kids while playing in a circle. It was a song about a murderer, that gradually shock the entire town for months because there are children who had been abducted and found murdered in the most horrendous way and the police haven’t able to capture or even suspect anyone. There is even bounty to whoever captures him but none avail.

Now that one more child named Elsie Beckmann got abducted and murdered, the public pressures the police to hurry and catch the murderer. This is also lead to chaos among the civilian, who suspect each people on the street who is talking to a child even if the child only asks regular things to them, accusing them blindly. Not only the public and the police who is frustrated about these killing, on the other side, the killer is also frustrated at how the police ignore his letter, feeling like he doesn’t get attention enough and decided to send a letter to the journalist, stating that he is not done and will continue on hunting children. This letter made the public terrified on whether they should allow their children to go to school or not. And this letter is also the mistakes made by the killer who would lead him to get arrested in the end.

The authority or Mr. secretary in this movie isn’t pleased about this letter and called the inspector, stating they should get hands-on everything to stop this ruckus and made the public distrust them even more, then the police decided to raid every single shady thing and each leads they found. What is so fascinating about this movie is, how the police track down the murderer. With no technology around, they only relied on leads from witnesses such as people on the street who sometimes their statement isn’t correct and just on a whim or baseless suspicion. They also trace the letter from its fingerprints and even involve graphology to investigate the handwriting and they stated that whoever writing this letter is insane, they said the writing as a whole displays elusive yet unmistakable signs of madness. So with this, the police began searching further into every prison, clinic, and insane asylums.

While the endless raid from the police on every corner of the town, threatening the livelihood of criminals businesses, They are beginning to think about how to stop this and want to return everything to normal, they finally they decided to take the matter in hand and decided to catch the serial killer by themselves so then they could continue their business as usual. Then they choose to track the killer by hiring beggars all over the town because they are everywhere and no one pays attention to them. While the police and criminals are busy trying to find a way to capture the killer, the killer himself is also busy finding a new victim. And he sees a little girl by herself from a mirror and follows her. Fortunately, the girl is with her mom so he doesn’t succeed that which leads him even crazier.

Meanwhile, the police who pursued to find the identity of the killer from mental asylum records gained results as the police visits one of the houses and disguise as someone from the tax office and find the suspect name is Hans Beckert and all the clues led to him as he might’ve been the killer they’ve been searching for along this time.

During the time the police still figured out whether this man is the right one, a blind man listens to the killer’s whistle as he is passing through him, noticing he once heard it while someone buying Elsie Beckmann a balloon from him the day she is being killed. The blind man tried to follow the sound when one of the men on the street asked him what happened, the blind man told him he recognized the sound and the man said he is with a little girl. So the blind man asks the man to pursue him because he is with Elsie the day she is abducted. This part is really amusing and really fun to watch. As the man track him down with the girl still following him, the man didn’t want to accuse him blindly without any proof so he decided to keep following them. When the killer brings out his knife, the man is certain this might be the man. Even though later he only use the knife to peel a fruit but he was still certain so he made a letter on his palm with chalk and writes capital M and marks it on the killer’s shoulder and get away from there to alert others to catch him. 

Now that the police already found the killer’s identity while the criminals who found him in person and put a mark on his shoulder, the long pursuit begins. There are few beggars who keep on following his every step. When the girl who is with him noticed that he has a mark on his shoulder, the killer is terrified knowing he is marked and that someone might be on his tail, he pulls the girl’s hand and asks her to run with him but then he realized its already too late, so he is running by himself, leaving the little girl by herself. Thank God for that, the little girl is safe.

The chase will make your heart ponder. Because come on guys, don’t let this wretched man run away but he did succeed by escaping and hiding in an office building where the workers going home at that time so they lost trace on him. The criminals thinks that this killer might be hiding inside the building so they decided to take this matter by themselves. They are planning a heist to capture this man. Things really get interesting from this.

The police are waiting inside the killer’s house while the killer himself is trapped inside the building. The criminals searched inch by inch inside the office building but found nothing. Meanwhile, the killer who felt that he is safe now tried to pick the lock on the door with his knife. And because of the noise he made, one of the guys heard it and then report it. Together they raid the storage room and finally capture the man.

One of the night guards who has been held hostage pull the call to the police when he heard this, forcing all of the criminals inside the building panicked but luckily they found the killer and brought him along with them.

Unbeknownst to the criminals, they left one man behind in the basement, and thus he got arrested by the police. He got cornered when he is transferred to the homicide department, stating that he didn’t kill anyone there and ended up telling the police they had already captured the killer and told the hidden place of their organizations.

In that place, a court led by the criminals begins. They stated that the killer should be punished by death, because of how he killed those children with no mercy. But the man who is on behalf of the killer as the acting lawyer said that this killer here is just a crazy man that should be put in mental asylum and they should give him to the police. But the criminals don’t agree. As this crazy man could plead not guilty on insanity matter and in the end will be sent to the asylum and he could go roam free again someday, so they still insisted that he should be dead. The killer who is scared stated that he can’t help it and had to kill the children. He said there is a voice inside him that pushed him to do this and he doesn’t remember anything when killing them. But after he read his own act in the newspaper, he himself couldn’t even believe that he did all of that. This statement caused chaos inside and some of the criminals seem empathized by him but majorly all of them still want him punished by death. Things almost got out of control but then the police arrived.

The movie ends with the cries of the mother whose children have been abducted and murdered and saying “this will not bring our children back.” And they continue to cry. Not really sure what is the verdict, whether the killer has to be punished by death or else but my assumption based on the reaction from the mother, the killer did get punished by death but it still won’t change the fact that their children are already gone forever.

For me, what is so interesting about this movie is how the criminal organizations are even involved with the chasing of child murderers and pedophiles I mean who would’ve guessed that? Who would’ve guessed that a serial killer movement influences the other criminals’ business and tick them off? That part really takes exciting rides along with the movie. It is also amusing how even the criminals despise a pedophile and on top of that a child murderer too. It is also interesting how even without technology such as DNA tracing and computer database, the police able to find the killer’s identity based on the killer’s mistake by sending a letter to the newspaper and examining the handwriting, also kudos to the graphology too! Without them, the police won’t find the true identity of the killer. 

There is some fascinating story behind the film making that Fritz Lang himself asserted that he cast real criminals for the court scene in the end. According to biographer Paul Jensen, 24 cast members were arrested during filming. And in Germany, the Movie was also banned by the Nazis in July 1934. The film premiered in 1931. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party took power in 1933 and banned the film the next year. It was then stored in a vault, where it stayed for many years. German audiences didn’t get the chance to see the film again until 1966. For its video release 30 years later, it underwent a restoration that included the addition of music and sound effects that wouldn’t have been authorized by Fritz Lang (he deliberately kept certain passages quiet) and the cutting of certain scenes. The image had also been altered to fit the 4:3 screen size. These injustices were amended in 2009 for the film’s Blu-ray release. The film is supposedly based on the real-life case of serial killer Peter Kürten, called “The Vampire of Düsseldorf”, whose crimes in the 1920s horrified Germany. However, director Fritz Lang has expressly denied that he drew any inspiration from the case. Nevertheless, he and his wife Thea von Harbou researched the crimes carefully, consulting with German police, visiting murder scenes, interviewing sex offenders in prison, and even talking to detectives in Scotland Yard in London. According to Lang biographer Paul Jensen, the director spent eight days doing field research in a mental institution. Two German serial killers are mentioned in the film- Georg Karl Großman (believed to have killed up to 50 young women) and Fritz Haarmann (known as the Butcher of Hanover as he killed at least 24 young men in the city).

The movie is black and white, it’s vintage and classic and really fun to watch. Truth to be told, I am fairly entertained through the whole movie because I’m a fan of crime-thriller investigation. So if you are into a crime-thriller movie, this movie is definitely for you and you should watch it!