M was the first of several trial films, most obviously his first hollywood movin the spencer tracy film, fury. And there you get the audovisual evidence in the form of a news reel that joes as ascribed right through to ninet 56 - which is all about probing evidence reality. Right triumphing over wrong in lang's films has very little to do with the competencies of the institutions of law. The kind of arbitrariness of the dividing line between good and evil is so often shown on the level of performance and on the levels of lighting and on thelevel of style.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-born film director Fritz Lang (1890-1976), who was one of the most celebrated film-makers of the 20th century. He worked first in Weimar Germany, creating a range of films including the startling and subversive Mabuse the Gambler and the iconic but ruinously expensive Metropolis before arguably his masterpiece, M, with both the police and the underworld hunting for a child killer in Berlin, his first film with sound. The rise of the Nazis prompted Lang's move to Hollywood where he developed some of his Weimar themes in memorable and disturbing films such as Fury and The Big Heat.
With
Stella Bruzzi
Professor of Film and Dean of Arts and Humanities at University College London
Joe McElhaney
Professor of Film Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York
And
Iris Luppa
Senior Lecturer in Film Studies in the Division of Film and Media at London South Bank University
Producer: Simon Tillotson