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Watch М (M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder) [Sub: Eng]
[VIDEO ESSAY] A precursor to the serial killer and policier genres, "M" is first and foremost a suspense thriller made all the more gripping because the identity of the killer is revealed in the first act.
Our identification with [Lorre] as a psychopath is so complete it's hard to believe that while appearing before Fritz Lang's cameras in the daytime, he was, at night, acting as a comedian in a farce.
It is a cousin to the early Hitchcock of The Lodger, and I have always found something even something faintly Ealingesque about its cynicism and satire.
This is a movie that dares to sympathize with a sick person, that risks making the monster real and us (in an era when Germany's cinema was still shellacked in canted angles and fanciful shadows).
March 12, 2013
Chicago Reader
The moral issues are complex and deftly handled: Lorre is at once entirely innocent and absolutely evil. Lang's detached, modified expressionist style gives the action a plastic beauty.
Lang's movie is that rare thing, a nail-biting soul-searcher. While M steers clear of analyzing deviance, it is startling in its musings on which punishment fits an inhuman crime.