3. M (1931), dir. Fritz Lang
I saw this last night with gillywoo and big_daz over in Wortley (after an unscheduled tour of Harehills which happened because I am still a n00b with the Leeds bus system). I already had a pretty high opinion of Fritz Lang after seeing Metropolis a month ago, but it's shot up even further now.
In essence, a child murderer (Peter Lorre FTW!) is on the loose, prompting mass hysteria and a city-wide police hunt which begins to interfere with the activities of the rest of the criminal fraternity. They decide they've had enough - to get the police off their backs, they will have to catch the child murderer themselves. After cornering Lorre in an office building, they succeed, and then bundle him off to an abandoned warehouse to subject him to their own take on a criminal trial. Meanwhile, however, one of their number, captured by the police during the office building raid, reveals what has happened under interrogation - and Lorre is finally 'rescued' by the police to face a real trial.
So what have we got here? Well, for a start a seminal serial killer movie. Lorre remains a shadowy figure for much of the first part of the film, as we see the social effects of his actions rather than the actions themselves - a bit like Summer of Sam. But later he come into focus as the underworld characters close in on him, while in the trial scene he even gets the chance to offer his own explanation of his behaviour - with some of the listening criminals nodding in sage agreement as he does so! OK, so this is over 50 years after Crime and Punishment, but I'm guessing it must have been one of the first cinematic attempts to portray the 'mind of a serial killer'.
It's also frighteningly full of modern resonances. We see an over-stretched police force rounding up anyone without papers in an attempt to catch the killer, while embarrassed politicians demand that they do more. We see fingers of suspicion pointed wildly at anyone who attracts attention to themselves. And we hear appeals to the pain of the mothers who have lost their children being used to justify laying aside the normal processes of the law.
Nothing ever changes, of course. But how unsettling to see all this being raised in the context of a country swiftly heading towards a fascist dictatorship...
In essence, a child murderer (Peter Lorre FTW!) is on the loose, prompting mass hysteria and a city-wide police hunt which begins to interfere with the activities of the rest of the criminal fraternity. They decide they've had enough - to get the police off their backs, they will have to catch the child murderer themselves. After cornering Lorre in an office building, they succeed, and then bundle him off to an abandoned warehouse to subject him to their own take on a criminal trial. Meanwhile, however, one of their number, captured by the police during the office building raid, reveals what has happened under interrogation - and Lorre is finally 'rescued' by the police to face a real trial.
So what have we got here? Well, for a start a seminal serial killer movie. Lorre remains a shadowy figure for much of the first part of the film, as we see the social effects of his actions rather than the actions themselves - a bit like Summer of Sam. But later he come into focus as the underworld characters close in on him, while in the trial scene he even gets the chance to offer his own explanation of his behaviour - with some of the listening criminals nodding in sage agreement as he does so! OK, so this is over 50 years after Crime and Punishment, but I'm guessing it must have been one of the first cinematic attempts to portray the 'mind of a serial killer'.
It's also frighteningly full of modern resonances. We see an over-stretched police force rounding up anyone without papers in an attempt to catch the killer, while embarrassed politicians demand that they do more. We see fingers of suspicion pointed wildly at anyone who attracts attention to themselves. And we hear appeals to the pain of the mothers who have lost their children being used to justify laying aside the normal processes of the law.
Nothing ever changes, of course. But how unsettling to see all this being raised in the context of a country swiftly heading towards a fascist dictatorship...