M - How Fritz Lang Shaped the Modern Movie
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- čas přidán 9. 09. 2016
- When you talk about movies that have shaped cinema, I think that M by Fritz Lang has to be in the conversation. Although it wasn't the first movie to use sound, it was the first to use it well.
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M. Lang. Paramount Pictures, 1931.
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The kangaroo court scene is one of the all-time great scenes in world cinema. It truly forces you to consider both human nature and the nature of evil.
Exactly, there is no right or wrong answer, but it forced the audience to think of people more than "100% evil" or "100% good" There is a moral grey area in this movie, and Fritz Lang forces the audience to think.
leviathanmg
The kangaroo court scene in The Death of Stalin reminded me greatly of Fritz Lang’s M.
" I kill for profit , not for relief . I am better than you " - The Self Unaware Criminal .
Lang was a German who saw the rise of Fascism up-close and personal. The nature of justice and injustice is a major subtext in "M".
Hey, that court was totally legit! The defendant even had a highly educated court appointed attorney. 🤠
And...the blind man uses SOUND to solve the murder. There's some great, almost meta, stuff happening here with film language.
Genius use of new technology.
It’s pretty funny to me the movie just labels him “blind”
The fact that M is in black and white is not a disadvantage. It's the opposite: if color film had already been used in cinema (not sure if it was invented yet), it would probably make the stiff theatrical acting more noticeable. B&W is a graphic means of stylization, so it works better in combination with the exaggerated facial expressions, and also serves to underline the "good vs. evil" confrontation visually.
Color was invented *in a way*, in the form of the Technicolor two strip process giving weird orange/green/blue tints (see Black Pirate or Hell's Angels). But even still when three strip full color Technicolor came about in the mid 30s, it was tied to Hollywood productions and thus not practically available in Europe anyway (although a few UK collaborations were made like The Thief of Baghdad). It wasn't until Goebbels, admiring the lavish US color productions, pushed Agfa to improve their AgfaColor at the end of the 30s that it became available around 1940, so then discounting the Nazi movies using it (Baron Munchhausen being a clear Disney imitation), practical color for European full feature films wasn't available until after WW2. And I agree it was probably for the better as it delayed the switch to color, bringing the B&W cinematography to a higher level in the subsequent two decades like in The Third Man, 8½, Bicycle Thiefs, The Seventh Sea.
The editing in this movie is also phenomenal.
Some of the techniques Lang used I think still are powerful today. They was we learn of the demise of Elsie Beckmann is so subtle it is painful. I also thought the intercutting between the meetings of the police and the criminals was fantastic.
In some ways the technical limitations are noticeable, but Lang overcame them in a film that is still powerful today.
Some of the technical limitations are noticeable, but compared to most of movies released in the early 1930's it feels so much like a lot of modern thrillers!
Hmm. Interesting. I thought that shot with the balloon floating away was very clunky and overtly manufactured. It looked extremely fabricated, and not on a good way.
@@gmac9641 Perhaps you need to consider that the film was made 80 years ago. What may seem a cliche to you today may have been groundbreaking then. I, myself, find it understated and poignant. It seems that today they would have shown the child being murdered or the body. The fact that it does not show anything gory but lets you use your imagination is what makes the scene powerful to me.
@@RadioMattM Sure, that's fair. I just remember seeing that balloon and the editing was very bad it looked like someone cut out a piece of paper and dragged it over the screen superimposed or something. It looked very raw.
If you're giving it the bonus points for its age, then OK, but classifying it as great cinematography... might be a stretch.
@@gmac9641 I somehow agree to both of you, that was not photogenic but the circumlocutory method of telling the story was brilliant. I feel it depends ultimately on preferences. For me story telling method is more important than how a particular scene looks like, because it gives the scope of imagining 🙂
It's amazing how enjoyable, visually stunning and sincere Metropolis, M and The Testament of Dr Mabuse still are. After moving to the United States, the Hollywood studio system and the Hayes code had a clear effect over Fritz Lang's creative output. Sadly, with a few notable exceptions, Hollywood has always been a creative cesspool meant to produce money, not art.
omg true.
Sebastian B.
I don’t know why people say this. Hollywood does produce a lot of shit, but majority of the great films still come from Hollywood.
Testament is an amazing film. The first 5 minutes of sheer NOISE.
@@joellaz9836 It's because in their minds there's no such thing as a duality. It either has to be bad or good, white or black, cesspool or goldmine. While in reality the results from either moving to or away from Hollywood vary wildly. Hitchcock is one example of a thriving director that produced real masterpieces and just plain good movies, on average way above his British output. And what exactly did Welles manage to get going while in Europe? It's obviously not just the surroundings that make a good director.
Some of the best movies ever created aren't always in English. Nor are they always in effervescent color. They're often in black-and-white, spoken in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Swedish, Japanese with subtitles. That's why I love channels exploring lesser known films from the early years of sound. A blueprint of cinema yet to come
Great video, but it should be mentioned that the first 10 minutes of this masterpiece are worth whole books of cinema school.
The shadow approaching the little girl while she´s bouncing her ball against a "assassin wanted" poster on a column is bone chilling. The mother crying for her daughter, followed by the silent images of the empty lunch table, empty staircase, empty garden as the child´s ball rolls out, the balloon trapped by the electric cables.
This movie touches highs unreached even today, 90 years on. I have difficulties calling it "movie" as it is much more, but I understand you have to know Germany, its psyche, its atavic angst, to really get it.
I had the pleasure seeing M in a local cinema a few year's ago, easily my favourite movie going experience ever.
I am jealous of that, I haven't been lucky to have any great experiences like that.
I saw this at the Goethe Institut in Singapore. A 16mm screening in a packed room. It was not the first time I viewed it, but it is my principle memory of watching it.
I found this at a local movie store a few weeks ago, a lucky find, needless to say it was a brilliant movie and this is a brilliant essay. One thing that struck me with the film was the climate that surrounds the setting, being the Weimar Government and its slow decent into financial chaos. Considering the rise of the nazi party coincided with this film being made as well, truly makes it one of the bravest movies in history. Wasn't the original title 'Murderer within us' ? That takes guts...I think it was years ahead of its time, as many Fritz Lang movies are, due to the whole agenda around a child murderer can give... This would be hard to pull of today, yet somehow he transcends the moral values of the audience and make us think about the nature of 'evil'The use of audio truly helped create a living world within the film, but another thing that I noticed was how alive and sprawling the streets where at times. In old 30s movies, I notice that the streets are deserted, in particular early James Cagney crime flicks such as public enemy which was the same year ? There are no to little life on the sets, which this film doesn't really suffer with...I'm so happy to have discovered your channel, just looking at your uploads makes me smile, Keep on making great content !
I appreciate it. There are political messages which I could have talked about, but I didn't think it fit in the tone.
What a thoughtful & intelligent comment! I am a big fan of both Lang & Lorre, so I really appreciated your observations. This essay IS good!
Fritz almost couldn't make the film because of that old title "Murderers Among Us".
The original title was "Mörder unter uns" (Murderers Among Us).
Let's not forget the choice of actors for the roles. Amazing
I watched this movie last night, high on an edible but with no second screen to distract me. I missed out on some dialogue occasionally, but I was never confused and I was deeply engrossed in the unraveling of the plot. The acting was wonderful. Peter Lorre and Gustaf Gründgens did the most phenomenal jobs I've ever witnessed. The direction, camera work and audio were also executed flawlessly.
This film was produced by Nero Film, my great grandfather's and great uncle's film company. Their names were Henry Nebenzahl and Seymour Nebenzal, Americans who moved to Berlin early in the century but who had to leave after Goebbels threatened them. Goebbels also threatened Lang and Lorre. The Nazis liked the film so they removed the names of the Jewish producers and their production company, names that were not back into the credits until the remastered version.FYI, poducers are the people who hire the directors and actors, and my family has owned to rights to M for almost 90 years. Other family members who worked for Nero Film during that time were my grandfather, as well as my grandmother's cousin, screenwriter and author Curt Siodmak ("Wolf Man" and "Donovan's Brain").
By the way,
Didn't they also produce the American version of the 1950's starring David Wayne and Martin Gabel? A fine film in its own right.
Siodmak (Siódmiak) is a Polish surname. It would be interesting to know if he had any connection with Poland or if it was just a surname that remained after a few generations.
Beautiful essay. I always feel most people ignore the beauty and importance of classic film nowadays.
Fritz Lang was Stanley Kubrick before Stanley Kubrick.
Kubrick wishes he had an ounce of the talent that Lang has.
Someone’ll have to explain this comparison to me. They feel like completely different directors...
I think they are referring to how kubrick is often called the master of all genres, when Fritz Lang also made films of multiple genres. Metropolis (Sci-Fi), M (Thriller)
Alfred Hitchcock ?
@Bogie Hitchcock Is one of the greatest of all time, he builds tension and suspense like no other director
You know it's an oldie when citizen kane references it as a classic.
This movie makes me feel lucky to be German.
It's far and away one of the best movies of all time.
Jacks Movie Reviews I agree. Nice video, by the way, really interesting.
Nether Rack
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed
Nether Rack
Why? The guy who made this film was half-Jewish and had to flee Germany because of his background. Very sad.
Martin Persson and you can’t praise all Germans for the actions and impeccable directing of Fritz Lang
So well done. Thanks for making and posting this. This is one of my favorite movies of all time.
Peter Lorre's performance was absolutely fantastic
You should see Applause (1929) by Rouben Mamoulian, Hallelujah (1929) by King Vidor, The big house (1930) by George Hill, City Streets (1930) by Rouben Mamoulian; films that offer much avant garde ideas about sound in movies, before M by Lang. The real legacy in M is mantain a continued dialogue from a scene to another scene but by different characters in different locations. A great achievement. But in another devices, these already were made in various forms before (as in the films already mentioned). And there are another classic made almost at same time which M, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Rouben Mamoulian, that is real challenge to the tecnology of the time and a triumph of the imagination over the limitations of the medium. Much more creative about sound than M.
Thanks for the recommendations!
My favorite film of all time... THANK you for this analysis! You express it far better than I ever could.
Small correction regarding the credits: Peer Gynt is the name of the play the song originated from, not the composer. That being said, great video.
i just randomly watched it on youtube not too long ago and was immediately hooked. definitely holds up as one of the all time great films
For me, one of the more intriguing messages is, literally, in the last minute of the film and it's questioning of capital punishment. Damn good movie. Damn fine.
Very astute observation on the "one person surrounded by other people" comparison.
I just saw the film last night. Before than i thought I'd seen the best crime/mystery/noir films. This was by bar the most profound.
One of my favorite movies
This is exactly what I was thinking when I first saw this film. You know it's a good video essay when the intangible thoughts in your mind are put into words.
I'm glad we see eye to eye on this!
This film inspired my second short film for filmschool. Great film and great performance!
Awesome movie and - as always - a very insightful and comprehensive analysis of both the movie and its pioneering techniques. It has "origins of film noir" written all over it. After all it depicts a decadent, early 1930s Berlin. Great dissection as always!
I don't think it can be underestimated when looking at the evolution of the medium of film.
Found this film through Team Fortress 2 fan film "Emesis Blue", and I liked the detail that the name used for medic in the movie was Fritz Ludwig [no clue if that's his name in tf2 cannon but fuck it], like Fritz Lang that is credited and the maker of "M". It was just a nice detail to me and I'm glad I caught it.
This movie was amazing my first time seeing it and wow peter Lorre performance was phenomenal this movie really shows you what the true meaning of morality is and the court scene is the most powerful scene in the movie.
Fantastic video. Subscribed right away!
Thank you!
Fantastic analysis. Thank you. Also, my guess is the film was one of the first to use Freudian-type psychological themes (sexual compulsion, perversion, guilt, etc.)
that were so popular later in the 1940s.
The way he portrays Elsie Beckmann's death? Oh my god forget about it. I love almost everything about this movie.
It's interesting because this film really doesn't have a main protagonist. We're just jumping from nameless mob member to nameless mob member in the thick of this awful crime wave. In a way, Beckert is our only real, fleshed out character.
The film favors the process of finding the killer than it does with presenting us with a character arc but yet it somehow still ends up being fascinating. Just a brilliant film. I want the Criterion.
Inspector Lohmann is also a formed character, one who appears in other Lang films played by the same actor.
With dead silence, too. Lang knew the absence of sound had power, as well.
I found this out through emesis blue
just finished watching M for the first time. I enjoyed it and can see why it's highly regarded. The very thought provoking question that the film brings up (what to do with the criminally insane) reminded me of the same conundrum that comes up in Batman.
I've seen this several times. I was taking German in college at the time. I really enjoy the parallel efforts to catch the "kinder murderer."
Great video well done M is a great movie i also love Metropolis
A truly brilliant film.
never saw it but after your review i sure will thanks
Very good look at this film! I mention this film in my documentary when looking at the innovation of sound- he uses silence very well in the film too.
Another two great films known for great sound in early film include The Blue Angel and L'Atalante. Check em out if you haven't.
I've seen Blue Angel bur not L'Atalante, I'll check it out!
ITs quite an experience. Extraordinary use of editing too for its time. A real dream of a film.
Thomas Pollock
It sounds interesting, thanks for the suggestion.
It's nice that I can understand everything :) (I'm from Germany)
One thing I really enjoy about M that is mostly absent from modern movies is that it is a simple story explored from lots of different perspectives. You've got the police, the underground gangsters, the beggars, the aggrieved families, the victims, random citizens on the street and the murderer himself. Some of these characters overlap, but mostly none of them know each other. It's told from the point of view of God, eavesdropping on the world.
Thank you for this! Peter Lorre! I was so throw off I didn’t know he was German but you can’t miss those eyes! Some people think movies are too old if there from the 90s! I can’t stand it. I will check this out
He was born in Hungary under the name Laszlo Loewenstein, but he surely had to know German to get by. In America he did great work in "Casablanca" and "The Maltese Falcon", among so many others.
Have you seen Hitchcock's Murder (1930) and Blackmail (1929)? He also pioneered in using sounds artistically during the advent of sound movies.
I have seen murder but not blackmail, and there are a lot of great examples of other movies pioneering sound, but I feel like M may not have done it first, but it did it best!
Do you think Coppola used the meeting of the criminals as a model for the meeting of the heads of the 5 families in Godfather Part 1?
I definitely think so, I was thinking about mentioning it (in the section where I was talking about the later movies it inspired) but chose not to!
I didn't think about that until you just said it but that makes total sense.
This movie really gets your brains going. If you haven’t seen it you should!!
And it also has a great comics adaption by Jon J Muth.
what is that Song called again. the one that he whistles?
In the Hall of the Mountain King
Someone may already have pointed this out, I only scrolled down so far. I believe that's actually Lang whistling; Lorre apparently couldn't.
Emesis blue lead me here
Thanks for the tip. I will watch it. In der Originalfassung. Because for me, it is not in a foreign language 😃
Can you do a another fritz Lang great films metropolis that movie is so good I like the themes and symbolism in that f
movie it so good
are there any Friz lang movie you would recommend when he came to america
If you have never seen 'Fury' you should check that out!
dornravlin "The Big Heat" is an awesome film.
Fucking love this movie
I'm right there with ya!
I liked M as much as Metropolis..However, I think Metropolis is far underappreciated in its societal commentary and often blown off as just and early visual candy sci fi movie.
Its also difficult for germans to understand the dialog dou to audio quality(speaking from experianc)
Beckett gets tortured by his compulsions until he gives in , then gets tortured by his conscience afterward . While I believe putting him to death might be release for him , its clear he was being judged by people no better than he .
It is a good movie (although I hate to read subtitles as it takes my gaze away from the expressions of the actors).
Fritz Lang not Läng
yo emesis blu
Four years earlier, _Metropolis_ came out, innovating silent cinema
this movie is so diffrent and it feels so modern...i wonder they never make it new....totally dark movie
There was an American remake of this movie in 1951 set in Los Angeles.
I hate people who say "i won't watch it because it's not in English, it'd old or it's black and white". I hate them. They are losing so, so many amazing things for this prejudice.
I have tried to watch this movie and the remake from the fifties, it's too disturbing, had to turn it off.
Check out a millennial perspective of M here: czcams.com/video/zOqy-InbNmY/video.html
I love that much of the film's narrative sort of coincides with the rise of Nazi Germany.
I know, especially seeing how brave it was of Lang to make a movie that very clearly slanders the Nazi Party. There were rumors that he was offered the head position as "head propaganda film maker" for the Nazi party and turned it down.
yes , I have read that Joseph Goebbels summoned Lang into his office at the Ministry of Propaganda to offer him that position and Lang was so shaken and shocked that he left Germany the next day.
90 years ago and still relevent
Thanks for this. At least it gives me insight as to why many seem to think this a masterpiece.
I do not.
It would appear it is getting some bonus points for being groundbreaking in its production. It wasn't enough for me.
If appreciation for this film is only achieved after research into its technological availabilities and pioneering techniques, then is it the film that is great, or the film-making?
For me the film was too long in unimportant parts and too short in important parts. There wasn't much suspense in terms of knowing how he'd get caught... the whistling was crammed down our throats to the point of annoyance.
Anyway, if you like a movie because you could hear car horns from off screen, or the camera panned from one subject to another, then I guess you simply have a different set of criteria for what makes for a night of entertainment, and that's OK.
why did you have to spoil the movie??????
I wouldn't have been able to effectively discuss the movie without bringing up spoilers.
My problem with the film is that... well, it's just not very entertaining. I found myself a bit interested the first 20 minutes, after which I realized that there wasn't going to be any music in the movie, which I was kind of waiting for. One of the most important aspects of a good movie is a fitting score. There are exceptions to this rule of course (12 Angry Men, No Country for Old Men), but for M it just didn't work having no music. I simply wasn't invested enough. I won't deny that it is an _bold_ movie though, perhaps it even is for today...
Actually, abusing of fitting scores hides the narrative holes of many bad scripts. In the golden era, all greats directors agreed on that. Your opinion is an evidence how movies are changing a lot according the needs of the audience. Today audience need to be "enticed" by something tangible all the time. They need to be engaged with music or to have a company of something clearly shoed on the screen. Silence, ambience or off-screen are too boring today. For me, a lot of bad movies are packed with a lot of decorations and nothing else. I am thinking about Nolan movies now...
@@qeimapa Yes, you are actually absolutely right about this. Let us take as an example; a modern film has a plot twist at the end that makes no sense whatsoever. But if you throw in some suspenseful, "plot-twisty" music over the scene, the audience is going to shit their pants in excitement, only because of this. Even though it makes no sense!
But what I am saying is that, for me, M would simply worked better with some sort of score. I'm not saying that the film is bad though, I actually find it quite impressive (good acting, cinematography, editing, etc). But I view it like this; If M is a perfectly made steak, the score would have been the salt. After all, a movie is not only a work of art, but entertainment as well. As a film maker, you want people to actually want to sit through your movie and be interested in it, which I sometimes had trouble doing with M. But maybe I am just another 21st century "bubble gum watcher" =)
I think this cinematography was added to create depth and tone to better call saul the final series completing the breaking bad universe. It's what I thought was very compelling about bringing a series to its climax. To highlight the epgy of filmmaking.🎯🧧