M.

Fritz Lang, 1931, bw (9.0*)
No. 11 on our compendium of all polls, No. 55 on the IMDB 250
M. is the classic Fritz Lang suspense thriller in which someone is murdering children in a German city, the police can't catch him, and the manhunt is so intense that it's interrupting all the normal crime, so even criminals enlist in the killer's search.

Peter Lorre is the psychotic serial killer, in a chilling performance, one that put him on the map as a creepy actor that can sell a sociopathic character. Lang did a great job capturing both the uneasiness and the complexity of the characters, as well as creating the atmospheric mood with lighting and cinematography, characteristic trademarks of German expressionism. Lang is more interested in the effects of the killings on the town than the actual crimes.

Like Murnau (Sunrise, The Last Laugh, Nosferatu) and Pabst (Pandora's Box), Lang is a must-see for fans of early cinema, particularly German, and before they came to Hollywood, which makes M. essential viewing as well. His 1926 masterpiece, Metropolis, is the most famous and significant early science fiction film, the same can be said for this film in the genre of crime.

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Metropolis

Fritz Lang, Germany, 1927, silent, bw (7.8*)
[Restored version]
Of course this looks pretty dated now, but when Fritz Lang created his science fiction masterpiece, there were no films as experimental or as striking an individual vision in the history of cinema up to that point. This version has some lost footage restored that was found in 2008 in a film warehouse in Argentina, who didn't return the print when WW2 broke out in Europe, so this is the most complete version available since it's release as all the other copies were destroyed by Allied air raids.

This story is from a novel by Thea von Harbou, who also wrote the screenplay. The heavily symbolic story involves a society where the wealthy live in a club above ground that resembles heaven, while the workers live and work underground in repetitive drudgery running giant machines. Lang's entire film is an indictment of a mechanized world usurping human individuality and choice, where there is no escape from the 'worker's hell' underground.

One particular woman, an angel named Maria, is a voice against the system who incites the workers to stand up. Meanwhile, the head capitalist has an inventor with a female robot he calls "Machine Man", who gets used in a political scheme to destroy Maria and a mysterious coming 'mediator', who can unite the two factions.

A lot of this story is pretty corny ("the head and the hands need a heart to unite them"), yet you can see that it influenced later films like Chaplin's Modern Times, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and even the dark mood of Gotham City in the Batman films. In fact, it was decades before sf films even had this much vision again.

This is a must for fans of German expressionism, it's probably the finest example of that movement. It's #96 on the IMDB top 250 films, which is probably a bit high, but you can see its influence in cinema history.

One of the first recipients of  our World Film Awards, as we awarded 15 silents films first.

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The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

Fritz Lang, 1933, Germany (8.0*)
This is an amazing film for its era, also known as "Crimes of Dr. Mabuse". Those who had Poltergeist make the hair on their neck stand up will likely feel chills from this film as well. Master director Fritz Lang is more well-known for "M" (Peter Lorre as a child killer) and the SciFi classic "Metropolis" (he likes the "M" thing!), yet this film has more radical (ie, advanced) film techniques for the time, especially special effects of ghosts. The film is about a psychological study of a madman, Dr. Mabuse, in an asylum for 10 years, whose writings have progressed from rampant hallucination to lucid descriptions of perfect crimes.

This is all innocent until the crimes start being committed, exactly as Mabuse wrote them. A police detective is baffled and investigates the case, while the psychiatrist is obsessed with studying Mabuse. We see some incredible ghost effects, as an apparently "projected ghost" from the still living Dr.Mabuse talks to, and hands items to the living. This is an excellent early crime (and horror) film, of course, dated by today's standards, but should be seen by all film students, and fans of old crime movies. This film makes all the "critics all-time best" lists. In German with subtitles.

Note: known as "expressionism", these are films that show a character's inner torment as external visualizations in film. Lang hated the term but was its best practitioner.

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