Fritz lang said his intent in making the film was toa create a picture of a society in the grip of self destructive urges and i think that's manifested in the film, and in several interesting ways. We can begin, for example, with the title itself, in what the letter m represents, which is most obviously murder. But also the lines on the palm of every hand have the letter m on it, which is the line of fate. And lank cinema increasingly becomes a cinema of traces, inscriptions, marks, things left behind, and often related to crime. There is also indehunt and the hunt. Absolutely yes, thes one of his anti notse films
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