A Great Movie - M Searches for a City Killer - 1931 Production - IMDB 8.3
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One of the giants of German silent cinema, Fritz Lang's first sound film M (1931) is a masterpiece from the years when silent cinema was gradually replaced by sound cinema. M - Searching for a City Killer, one of the first examples of sound films; It is a production that deserves the title of a masterpiece with its narrative and style features and its multi-layered structure that opens the concepts of morality and justice to discussion through human and society. The Germans, who were defeated in the First World War and on the verge of the Second World War, were going through a process of questioning the progressive understanding of history that formed the backbone of the Enlightenment Period philosophy. Various psychological effects of having lost the war were tried to be conveyed in different films with the message 'I am not to blame'. The approach, which constitutes the main motto of modernity and positivist philosophy, that humanity has evolved from primitiveness to "modern and rationalist man" throughout history, was destroyed by the inhumane destruction brought on by the First World War. The movie M - In Search of a City Killer, with its fiction that sprouted in a pessimistic atmosphere where the collective consciousness started to question what is really good and bad, made a remarkable contribution to these discussions from Lang's perspective.
M is about a child murderer who disrupts daily life by committing serial murders in Berlin and different groups of society who follow this murderer. Since the murderer played by Peter Lorre is a prominent figure in the film from the very beginning, what keeps the audience curious is not who the murderer is, but the involvement of different interest groups in pursuit of the murderer, and the punishment that will ultimately fall upon the caught murderer.
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The tense atmosphere of the film was created by shooting dim and smoky spaces in the studio environment in accordance with the depressing spirit of the subject. Since visual analysis is frequently used, the venue, decor, costumes and accessories were meticulously prepared and the effective environment of shadow was used with the skillful use of light. Emotions such as excitement, fear, tension and curiosity, as well as concepts such as death, justice and morality were shown indirectly, making use of the possibilities of the language of cinema with all its finesse, resulting in a production that opens up a field of experience for both the audience and the audience. It is perhaps one of the most successful examples of detective film. Experimenting the search techniques to the finest detail shows that the policing level of the period was high.
One of the points Fritz Lang makes variously throughout the movie is that what we hear is more reliable than what we see. The mother, who lives in an unsafe city, said to her neighbor, who was disturbed by the noise of the children playing and singing outside, "Let them make their voices so we know where they are." points out that the voice is actually a reliable source of information. Another example is that each of the fifteen eyewitnesses who were asked for their opinions on an event gave different statements.
The eye is a sense organ that we can never trust with complete surrender, as it can easily manipulate reality. As we will remember, the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon film on the relativity of perspectives also explained this subject in its simplest form by emphasizing human weaknesses. Finally, the scene of the murderer's capture has the final word on the superiority of hearing over sight: What the police couldn't find after months of searching, a blind beggar found only by following the whistling sound.
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Those who constitute the largest mass of the parties and constitute the base; the common folk, including sellers, beggars, and victims' families. People who were afraid that the murderer would harm their own children caused feelings of insecurity and skepticism to emerge, everyone passing by on the street became a potential criminal, and people began to blame even their closest relatives. On the other hand, beggars, attracted by the money they will earn as a result of their agreement with the dark men of the underworld, and the fact that they are treated like human beings and fed, pursue the murderer. The mothers of the dead children whose pain turns into hatred, on the other hand, want the murderer to be killed in the most brutal way with the feeling of hatred they feel. This picture is an ironic reflection of how the sense of benefit and weaknesses lead human beings to unconsciousness. The second group is the police, who represent a narrower mass, and those who have a say in the administration. Politicians, who need to ensure the peace of the society due to their interests, apply strict pressure on the police. The police, who work day and night, both on their own responsibilities and on this pressure from the top, still cannot succeed, because they despise the public and do not want to cooperate. The third group are the dark men of the underworld and the streets, who are less numerous. They see in themselves the right to prosecute the murderer, because only if the murderer becomes harmless will they feel safe and be able to continue their dirty work without the threat of the police. On the other hand, these people do not regret or even boast about their illegal deeds and justify and justify their actions with the motive of making money to survive. At the top of the triangle, there is only one person, the child murderer Hans Beckert. The murderer, who represents the worst on his own until the moment of interrogation, will turn the triangle upside down with the statements he made and the questions he asked during the trial and ask the audience, "Who is the bad person?", "What is fair, actually?" will ask questions.
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The court scene, which we can cite as one of the most successful and impressive scenes in the history of cinema, provides the opportunity for a wide variety of readings with its subtly fictionalized subtext. Beckert, who finds himself in the middle of a fictional court, a play whose script is known to everyone but himself, will either reveal all his secrets or lie. The murderer, who connects the murders he committed to mental illness and an unstoppable morbid instinct resulting from his seizures, will put forward his regret and despair as a justification for not deserving the punishment of death. The people, who do not trust the judicial system of the state, are determined to destroy the criminal. At this point, the director stands at a distance from both sides. He leaves this decision to the audience by placing the judge who gave the death verdict on one end and the lawyer defending Beckert's acquittal at the other end.
The questions “What is fair and who should decide it, how and according to what?” put forward by Fritz Lang, transform the film from being just a “story of a city looking for its murderer” into a production that takes it beyond its time. So much so that the questions underlined by the film are about ancient issues that will preserve their freshness and reproduce themselves in every medium that human beings exist. The concept of justice, which is derived from the root adl, means "putting something in its place" according to Islamic references, and in order to achieve this, seeing the same punishment appropriate for two different people who committed the same crime is often a useless solution. At this point, the blindfold of Themis, the symbol of justice holding a scale in one hand and a sword in the other, ensures that she remains impartial, but it is a method of trial that is unconstitutional but contrary to fairness, as it will cause the accused to judge independently from himself. This tension between the justice dispensed by the state and the justice that society expects constitutes the starting point of the film.
srcThe establishment of a court and even the assignment of a lawyer to Hans Beckert, who has been handed over to the public conscience, shows that the society has undertaken the mission of judging by its own means. The irony is that people choose to take justice away from ex-criminals, not from the state. Since the court established by the state will not give the death penalty to the mentally ill Hans Beckert because of his apology, those who argue that there will not be a fair punishment for the mothers who lost their children, said, "Who is justice for?" they raise the question. The justice pursued in the fictional court is one-sided, as those who hope to escape the nature of punishment and aggrieved mothers will ignore Beckert's words by choosing to blindfold and shut their ears. Fritz Lang ends the film with a clip from the case of Beckert, who was caught by the police and brought before a judge. What we see is neither the accused nor the lawyer nor the judge; The mothers of the victims, who wear veils of mourning, are talking among themselves: They say that the verdict of the court will not bring their children back and that they should take better care of their children. Here, the tie covering the eyes of justice has been removed and the society has begun to question itself.
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An interesting Note:
With the coming to power of the Nazi Party a year after the movie's release, Germany, which will have a dictatorial leader, will be transformed into a police state, and concentration camps will be created for Jews and dissidents. Filmed at a time when an oppressive and arbitrary government is headed for, this film actually tells a lot about its time and for those of us who are ahead of its time. With the letter M written with chalk on the palm, not only the coat of the murderer is marked, but also the power holders who undertake the task of punishing the criminals based on public conscience.
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“But I can't help it! I can not stop. What do you know? Who are you anyway? Criminals! Are you proud of it? Being able to open safes, steal and cheat at cards? These are all things I think you wouldn't do if you had a good job, or if you could do something right, or if you weren't just lazy slackers. What about me? This is against my will. This curse is on me. Fire! Those voices and torture…
He is always there, forcing me to go out on the street, constantly following me. It's me, I'm following myself. Even in silence I hear it. Yes, I'm hunting myself, I'm trying to escape from myself but I can't, I can't escape from myself. I have to return to the path he led me and flee. Bottomless streets… I want it to end, I want it to end!”
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Although it is old, it was disappointing that I had not heard from anyone such a successful film until now. If I hadn't decided to watch the entire IMDB movie list, maybe I wouldn't have noticed at all. It had one of the most impressive scenes I've ever seen. The scene where the murderer makes his confessions in the final scene is perhaps the most important reason for this movie to receive such high ratings.
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