M Film Analysis

M (1931) by Fritz Lang is one of the most significant films of the Weimar Republic that had influenced on aesthetic of film noir and an establishment of a genre of a psychological and urban thriller concentrating on a history of one murder who terrorizes a city. It was the first sound film by the director and, nowadays, recognized as one of the most interesting examples in experimentation with sounds and their connection with displaying images. A plot based on a real history of a serial killer from Dusseldorf is a peculiar interpretation of a reality, reflecting an atmosphere in the society because a paranoia described in the film was an illustrative explanation of a condition of people mind.
Siegfried Kracauer, a German film theorist, written

However, the society obsessed about an idea of finding the murder whose figure provokes a hysteria, is supposed to be its truly filling that experience urban culture and horror because stories about mystic murders who cannot control his acting become, become a part of urban folklore, a myth, a legend. The city plays a significant role even in a title of the film referring to a claim that the city lives like an independent organism, consisted of the police, criminals, beggars, murders, innocent inhabitance turning into victims: Murderer Among Us, A City Searches for a Murderer. They sound like title to express articles in the morning newspapers and increasing the fevered atmosphere. Thus, according to Tom Gunning, a film historian and a professor of art history, cinema and media studies at The University of Chicago, “the city in M seem to possess a will of its own; as this secondary title suggests, it could be seen as the protagonist of the film”

He had an abusive childhood, being a witness of repeated sexual violence towards his mother and sisters committed by his own alcoholic father. His addiction and tendency to cruelty had been already revealed before he was ten years old. He was arrested several times, but always released that allowed him to return to murdering immediately. His motive was to "strike back at oppressive society" and to experience joy. Unlike the Lang’s character, he was aware about his crimes and did them with pleasure. If he had not told his wife terrified by his acting about it, perhaps, he would have committed more. Making this distinguishing between the real figure and the character, Lang stresses an ability to make a deliberate choice between good and