The horror of the faces: That is the overwhelming image that remains
from a recent viewing of the restored version of ``M,'' Fritz Lang's
famous 1931 film about a child murderer in Germany. In my memory it was a
film that centered on the killer, the creepy little Franz Becker, played
by Peter Lorre. But Becker has relatively limited screen time, and only
one consequential speech--although it's a haunting one. Most of the film
is devoted to the search for Becker, by both the police and the
underworld, and many of these scenes are played in closeup. In searching
for words to describe the faces of the actors, I fall hopelessly upon
``piglike.''
What was Lang up to? He was a famous director, his silent films like
``Metropolis'' worldwide successes. He lived in a Berlin where the
left-wing plays of Bertolt Brecht coexisted with the decadent milieu
re-created in movies like ``Cabaret.'' By 1931, the Nazi Party was on the
march in Germany, although not yet in full control. His own wife would
later become a party member. He made a film that has been credited with
forming two genres: the serial killer movie and the police procedural. And
he filled it with grotesques. Was there something beneath the surface,
some visceral feeling about his society that this story allowed him to
express?
When you watch ``M,'' you see a hatred for the Germany of the early
1930s that is visible and palpable. Apart from a few perfunctory shots of
everyday bourgeoisie life (such as the pathetic scene of the mother
waiting for her little girl to return from school), the entire movie
consists of men seen in shadows, in smokefilled dens, in disgusting dives,
in conspiratorial conferences. And the faces of these men are cruel
caricatures: Fleshy, twisted, beetle-browed, dark-jowled, out of
proportion. One is reminded of the stark faces of the accusing judges in
Dreyer's ``Joan of Arc,'' but they are more forbidding than ugly.
What I sense is that Lang hated the people around him, hated Nazism,
and hated Germany for permitting it. His next film, ``The Testament of Dr.
Mabuse'' (1933), had villains who were unmistakably Nazis. It was banned
by the censors, but Joseph Goebbels, so the story goes, offered Lang
control of the nation's film industry if he would come on board with the
Nazis. He fled, he claimed, on a midnight train--although Patrick
McGilligan's new book, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast, is dubious
about many of Lang's grandiose claims.
Certainly ``M'' is a portrait of a diseased society, one that seems
even more decadent than the other portraits of Berlin in the 1930s; its
characters have no virtues and lack even attractive vices. In other
stories of the time we see nightclubs, champagne, sex and perversion. When
``M'' visits a bar, it is to show closeups of greasy sausages, spilled
beer, rotten cheese and stale cigar butts.
The film's story was inspired by the career of a serial killer in
Dusseldorf. In ``M,'' Franz Becker preys on children--offering them candy
and friendship, and then killing them. The murders are all offscreen, and
Lang suggests the first one with a classic montage including the little
victim's empty dinner plate, her mother calling frantically down an empty
spiral staircase, and her balloon--bought for her by the killer--caught in
electric wires.
There is no suspense about the murderer's identity. Early in the film
we see Becker looking at himself in a mirror. Peter Lorre at the time was
26, plump, baby-faced, clean-shaven, and as he looks at his reflected
image he pulls down the corners of his mouth and tries to make hideous
faces, to see in himself the monster others see in him. His presence in
the movie is often implied rather than seen; he compulsively whistles the
same tune, from ``Peer Gynt,'' over and over, until the notes stand in for
the murders.
The city is in turmoil: The killer must be caught. The police put all
their men on the case, making life unbearable for the criminal element
(``There are more cops on the streets than girls,'' a pimp complains). To
reduce the heat, the city's criminals team up to find the killer, and as
Lang intercuts between two summit conferences--the cops and the
criminals--we are struck by how similar the two groups are, visually. Both
sit around tables in gloomy rooms, smoking so voluminously that at times
their very faces are invisible. In their fat fingers their cigars look
fecal. (As the criminals agree that murdering children violates their
code, I was reminded of the summit on drugs in ``The Godfather.'')
``M'' was Lang's first sound picture, and he was wise to use dialogue
so sparingly. Many early talkies felt they had to talk all the time, but
Lang allows his camera to prowl through the streets and dives, providing a
rat's-eye view. One of the film's most spectacular shots is utterly
silent, as the captured killer is dragged into a basement to be confronted
by the city's assembled criminals, and the camera shows their faces: hard,
cold, closed, implacable.
It is at this inquisition that Lorre delivers his famous speech in
defense, or explanation. Sweating with terror, his face a fright mask, he
cries out: ``I can't help myself! I haven't any control over this evil
thing that's inside of me! The fire, the voices, the torment!'' He tries
to describe how the compulsion follows him through the streets, and ends:
``Who knows what it's like to be me?''
This is always said to be Lorre's first screen performance, although
McGilligan establishes that it was his third. It was certainly the
performance that fixed his image forever, during a long Hollywood career
in which he became one of Warner Bros.' most famous character actors
(``Casablanca,'' ``The Maltese Falcon,'' ``The Mask of Dimitrios''). He
was also a comedian and a song-and-dance man, and although you can see him
opposite Fred Astaire in ``Silk Stockings'' (1957), it was as a psychopath
that he supported himself. He died in 1964.
Fritz Lang (1890-1976) became, in America, a famous director of film
noir. His credits include ``You Only Live Once'' (1937, based on the
Bonnie and Clyde story), Graham Greene's ``Ministry of Fear'' (1944),
``The Big Heat'' (1953, with Lee Marvin hurling hot coffee in Gloria
Grahame's face) and ``While the City Sleeps'' (1956, another story about a
manhunt). He was often accused of sadism toward his actors; he had Lorre
thrown down the stairs into the criminal lair a dozen times, and Peter
Bogdanovich describes a scene in Lang's ``Western Union'' where Randolph
Scott tries to burn the ropes off his bound wrists. John Ford, watching
the movie, said, ``Those are Randy's wrists, that is real rope, that is a
real fire.''
For years ``M'' was available only in scratchy, dim prints. Even my
earlier laserdisc is only marginally watchable. This new version, restored
by the Munich Film Archive, is not only better to look at but easier to
follow, since more of the German dialogue has been subtitled. (Lorre also
recorded a soundtrack in English, which should be made available as an
option on the eventual laserdisc and DVD versions.) Watching the new print
of ``M,'' I found the film more powerful than I remembered, because I was
not watching it through a haze of disintegration.
And what a haunting film it is. The film doesn't ask for sympathy for
the killer Franz Becker, but it asks for understanding: As he says in his
own defense, he cannot escape or control the evil compulsions that
overtake him. Elsewhere in the film, an innocent old man, suspected of
being the killer, is attacked by a mob that forms on the spot. Each of the
mob members was presumably capable of telling right from wrong and
controlling his actions (as Becker was not), and yet as a mob they moved
with the same compulsion to kill. There is a message there somewhere. Not
``somewhere,'' really, but right up front, where it's a wonder it escaped
the attention of the Nazi censors.
From
Chicago
Sun-Times
<
BACK