Films for discussion and exploration…
M (Fritz Lang, 1921)
Readings
Flashback - Chapter 4
Short Guide - Chapter 4
Week 02 Notes
Week 02 Screening Report Journal
Film: M
Screening Date: 2011-09-26
IMDB Link: https://pro.imdb.com/title/tt0022100/
A. Briefly describe what your expectations for the film were? What did you already know about the film and from what source? What did you know about the country and historical period/style of its origin? Did you know anything about the director? What was the most important feature of the film you were looking for?
I was looking forward to seeing the 1931 film M again for the first time in about ten years, and I was looking forward to the chance to once again be haunted by director Fritz Lang’s visuals and the climatic sequence of the town’s citizens confronting Peter Lorre’s accused child murderer.
Having screened the film before, I was familiar with the overall story of the film as well as with actor Peter Lorre’s haunting depiction of a child murderer (which in many ways reminds me of Robert Mitchum’s performance as Harry Powell in the 1955 film The Night of the Hunter).
A few years ago, during the Vancouver Art Gallery’s 2008 exhibition Krazy! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art I picked up Jon J Muth’s comic book graphic novel adaptation of M which I enjoyed thoroughly for its interesting use of hundreds of hand drawings created with silverprint, graphite, powdered charcoal and pastel as based on photographs of actors Muth cast to help play out and revisualize Lang’s masterwork.
I also knew that the film was made in Germany in the late 1920s when German directors were experimenting with using an ever expanding, wide range of visual and other storytelling techniques to tell stories they were interested in. Overall, German Expressionist filmmaking served to push the envelope of what was acceptable for filmmaking. All of the techniques and styles developed during this time all served to enhance the dark storylines and worlds that were inhabited by ambiguous characters whose motives were never clear-cut or black and white.
During the time period Fritz Lang worked as a director in Germany, the country itself was in turmoil. Having lost the Great War, Germany was hit hard with a series of reparations that it had to pay combined with a plethora of other restrictions that resulted in the stagnation of its economy. Unemployment, inflation and poverty plagued the country as the government of the Weimar Republic slowly crumbled, leading to the rise of the authoritarian dictator Adolph Hitler and his Nazi Party.
I knew that director Fritz Lang was a very influential director who helped define the German expressionist movement in filmmaking that also helped to lay the groundwork for the Hollywood film noir. I knew that as a director, he started his work in Germany, but left Europe for Hollywood in the mid-1930s to escape persecution due to his Jewish heritage. He was able to continue his career making movies in Hollywood, where he directed many movies in the film noir genre.
ARTIFACT 01 > Lang, Fritz. “Images from Fritz Lang’s M.”
Having previously seen M about ten years ago on a small 13” television, I was looking forward to seeing it on a larger screen. I knew that experiencing it on a larger screen would help enhance the bleak, dark sets and the interaction of the various characters, especially in the film’s final scenes of the town confronting the accused child murderer.