Ok, back to more serious things.
Fritz Lang is likely best noted for two films, his silent Metropolis (1927), a film which wielded an enormous impact in the genres of science fiction and apocalyptic films. It also was a forerunner (moreso than The Golem) of the perils or robotics theme that has entwined many a film since then. In fact, forget robotics, it really is the precursor of the whole Artificial Intelligence idea in film.
It is a landmark film, and had it been the only great contribution to film, from Lang, it would have been enough. But, he also pioneered the serial genre of film with The Spiders (1919-1920), contributed films to the Mabuse mythos of German cinema, became influential in 1950s film noir, but, most of all, asides from Metropolis, created M, with Peter Lorre as a pedophilic serial killer.
Yes, the serial killer film genre was not created in the 1980s, but a half century earlier, in 1931. The film, which depicted the depravity loose in Weimar era Germany was, ironically, used by the Nazi Party as an agitprop film for their rise to power to 'clean up' German society of its filth and gangsterism.
In fact, once Hitler came to power, Joseph Goebbels offered Lang the post of top German war film propagandist. To his credit, Lang swiftly and discreetly left the country.
The trailer for M:
Yes, Peter Lorre's capture and trial by the German Underworld, who want to get him out of the way because his crimes are bringing down too much heat on their crimes, is a bit too much and unrealistic, but given what preceded this film, psychologically, it is one of the early sound era's masterpieces of character exposition.
And Lorre really does a good job at restraining himself. Again, to modern eyes, it's melodramatic, but seen as a progression toward the realism that swept films in the 1950s through 1970s, it shows Lang was ahead of his time. That dramas in the USA have regressed to 1930s level melodrama, even lacking the witty screenplays of a Frank Capra, is really damning.
Here is the whole film:
Oh, and note the technique established her, and used in all subsequent great horror films- Lorre is never really glimpsed fully until nearer the end. Lang lets the viewer imagine the child killer. Then, we get the recoil when it's the seemingly harmless and pathetic looking Lorre.
