© 2008 William Ahearn
Fritz Lang’s 1931 film “M” isn’t a great serial killer movie. It’s a great film about a serial killer. While the distinction may seem inconsequential to most, to me it’s a hair worth splitting. There’s a reason that people still watch this movie over 75 years after it was made and it has as much to do with how the content is presented as it does with the story itself. There’s that haunting whistled tune – Peter Lorre couldn’t whistle so Fritz Lang did it – Edvard Grieg’s "In the Hall of the Mountain King" that accompanies the killer.
Fritz Lang authored a number of films that are now considered classics and while his star has dimmed over the years, “M” remains as an unquestioned masterpiece. Some film buffs will also point to “Metropolis” as a great film but that film and the equally innovative “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari” by Robert Wiene are – at heart – empty oddities or fairy tales.
“M” is no empty fairy tale. Fritz Lang has denied that Hans Beckert, the killer in “M,” was based on the real Düsseldorf Vampire, Peter Kürten. There is good reason to believe Lang. For one thing, the fictional Hans Beckert was a child killer while the real life Peter Kürten would kill anything he could get his hands on. Kürten – as well as the American serial killer Henry Lee Lucas – also practiced bestiality in which the animal was killed as part of the sexual satisfaction. Utterly unrepentant, Kürten asked the executioner if he would still be able to hear after he was guillotined because hearing his blood flowing out of his own neck would give him great satisfaction.
There’s more on Kürten here and here.
Not exactly a sympathetic figure. Even so, no one has any sympathy for a child killer – not even criminals – and that is what Lang needed for the confrontation that appears in the film. Lang touches on motive as almost all serial killer films will do, even those that – decades later – will focus on forensics and profiling. In the confrontation between the killer and the criminals, the following exchange takes place.
Hans Beckert: I can't help what I do! I can't help it, I can't...
Criminal: The old story! We never can help it in court!
Hans Beckert: What do you know about it? Who are you anyway? Who are you? Criminals? Are you proud of yourselves? Proud of breaking safes or cheating at cards? Things you could just as well keep your fingers off. You wouldn't need to do all that if you'd learn a proper trade or if you'd work. If you weren't a bunch of lazy bastards. But I... I can't help myself! I have no control over this, this evil thing inside of me, the fire, the voices, the torment!
While the scientific and psychiatric tools will evolve over the decades, motive will always remain a mystery all its own.
An AVI of “M” is available here. It is much better viewed on real film or DVD and check with your local library for the recent Criterion Collection version.