After spending the past two months of rolling around in the deep fryer of the made-for-TV holiday romance genre, it's time to cleanse the palette, partake in some arts and culture, and build some brain muscle rather than fattening it up. It's time to travel through time, and around the world, partaking in some of the best cinema I've never seen. 10 movies, each a certified classic from some "best of" list or another, almost each from a different country, and one from each decade of the past 100 years of cinema.
9
M
1931, d. Fritz Lang - Criterion Channel
The Story (in two paragraphs or less)
There's a child murderer on the loose in Berlin. There's little clues to go on, and eyewitnesses have conflicting statements, making the police's job difficult. The population is in a panic, and start making wild accusations about associates and neighbours. The murderer sends notes to the police, which, when ignored, prompts them to send notes to the newspapers advising that he's not finished yet. What little forensics science is available is put to use, as is psychological profiling. The police raid brothels and underground speakeasies, homeless shelters and aggressively patrol the streets. The criminal underworld is unable to carry on, so they conduct their own search, utilising the homeless population as their watchful eyes. There's no mystery as to who the murder is, as we catch an early glimpse of Peter Lorre assessing himself in the mirror as the police voice over discuss who he might be. We eventually see he's unable to control his awful impulses, it's only a matter of time before he makes a wrong move, and once he does it's like the whole city has eyes on him. Cornered in an gated off office complex, security guards patrol while the criminal underworld plan basically a heist to take him out themselves. But the silent alarm gets pulled and things get even more complicated.
What did I think I was in for?
I knew very little about this film. I thought for some reason it was a film either by or starring Orson Welles, but I get some of these old noir movies mixed up sometimes. Only, M isn't noir. I'm probably thinking Dial M for Murder. I know Fritz Lang as an impeccable visual stylist, from his seminal 1925 silent science fiction masterpiece Metropolis, but I don't think I knew he had an extensive career beyond the silent era.
What did I get out of it?
This movie is a work of art, just utterly unique and deeply engrossing, and 90 years laters still full of the unexpected.
Following up on Eisenstein's theory of montages, Lang uses them so potently here, accompanied by J-cuts (where the sound - in this case, dialogue- for the upcoming scene starts playing before the scene has ended) and L-cuts (where the dialogue of the current scene continues to play over the next), and no musical soundtrack at all, beyond the telltale clue of the murderer's whistling.
Lang experiments with camera angles, positioning, tracking in ways that feel experimental even by modern standards, but the technical accomplishments are just one part of this brilliant film.
The story here features no protagonist, and it's a labyrinthine nature means we keep moving back to certain characters - policemen, the criminals, the murderer, the victims - as necessary, but whole lengthy scenes are constructed around moments where there's no character of consequence, it's just exemplifying the impact the events are having on the town. Is this the first instance where we can say "the city is the main character"?
I was not expecting a quasi-procedural out of this (will need to read up on when the first procedural can be traced back to) nor to see any reference to forensics or psychology. Even the final sequence, "the trial", where the murderer has is own impassioned plea for understanding has a strangely progressive view on sympathy for those suffering with mental health issues. For all his almost comic bug-eyed reactions, Peter Lorre, once he gets into the moment, is riveting.
Watching this, I can't help but feel that David Fincher worships at this altar. Zodiac and especially season 2 of Mindhunter seem like they're borrowing a lot from this playbook (and both achieve their own levels of masterful greatness).
Do I think it's a classic?
Absolutely. 100%
Did I like watching this?
Immensely. I love how it plays out, jumping in all sorts of different directions and weaving in and out of suspense, thriller, procedural, heist and courtroom drama genres, yet never losing a sense of itself.
Would I watch it again?
Maybe not right away, but yeah, I'll definitely be watching it again.
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