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M

Screening on Film
Directed by Fritz Lang.
With Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke, Ellen Widmann.
Germany, 1931, 35mm, black & white, 99 min.
German with English subtitles.

Based on accounts of an actual murder case, Lang’s landmark early-sound-era film eschews his previous expressionistic techniques to depict the growing agitation of a town in which a child murderer is on the loose with stylized realism. M captures the prevailing sense of despair and corruption of Germany in the early thirties in its portrayal of a pathetic killer (Brecht-trained actor Lorre in his film debut) hounded by an odd alliance of pursuers: both the chief of police and the highly organized criminal underworld.

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