M

M, Fritz Lang’s 1931 masterpiece, follows a manhunt to catch a child murderer named Hans Beckert, played by Peter Lorre. When he’s eventually identified—by a blind man, no less—it is because Hans unconsciously whistles notes from Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” theme, from music written for Henrik Ibsen’s 1867 play, Peer Gynt. Drawing from folktales, Ibsen’s fantastical drama features a frenzied scene where trolls chase the hero. “Eat him!” the creatures shout. “Tear away both his ears and his eyes!” Lang undoubtedly saw a popular Berlin production of Peer Gynt in 1928 and found the sequence evocative. He includes a similar moment in M, when a vigilante mob ensnares Hans, clamoring, “Kill the rabid dog!” and “Kill the monster!” The twist is that, by the end, the most monstrous figure in the film isn’t Lorre’s character but the crowd—a bloodthirsty mob of grotesque faces worthy of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Lang’s film, one of the most influential and enduring in German cinema, demonstrates a sympathetic understanding of Lorre’s tormented character, while the mob draws Lang’s ire. Through subtle implications so slight that the Nazis in the Weimar Republic missed them, Lang associates the mob’s actions with the National Socialists, who were emerging as a volatile political force in Germany.

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