M (1931)
As a city is terrorized by the crimes of a deranged child murderer, not only the police but other criminals, threatened by the panic that puts everyone under suspicion, decide they have to track the culprit down to protect their own interests. One of the greatest visionary directors of all time-Fritz Lang gradually crosscuts between the efforts of these separate groups, the public at large, and the murderer himself graphically describing each stage of the pursuit and at the same time exposing the inner life of the city. Even the random touches of dark humor through the desperate search & investigations by the police & the mob world, gives another shade of completeness to this masterpiece. No other thriller has so effectively combined exposition and suspense with a portrait of an entire society, and
M does this through a dazzling way of visual rhymes and thematic portrayals that eventually draw the art of celluloid storytelling.
Not one frame in the film displays an act of harm on a child, but we find the victims in chilling uncanny compositions of the bouncing ball without its owner, an untended balloon caught in telephone wires, and the vacant corridors of the child's home, stressed by a mother's tensions for her absent daughter.
A landmark of film-noir classics.
>>: A+