PR in the Philippines

(SeaPRwire) –   The fascination with serial killers in cinema began early, with the Portuguese drama The Crimes of Diogo Alves fictionalizing the life of a notorious murderer in 1911. Over the following two decades, crime and punishment remained consistently popular themes, appealing to audiences drawn to tales about gangsters, outlaws, and murderers driven by strange psychological motives. However, Austrian director Fritz Lang established a template that would shape decades of serial killer films with his 1931 film M, which marks its 95th anniversary this week.

While Lang’s silent sci-fi epic Metropolis (1927) is now more widely recognized, M remains regarded as one of the all-time greats. It holds influence both technically—as an early masterpiece of sound film—and artistically, for its innovations in procedural thriller storytelling.

Set in Berlin, M chronicles the public’s reaction to an anonymous child predator (portrayed by Peter Lorre), who abducts young girls from the streets. As police initiate a manhunt, organized crime bosses orchestrate their own search, motivated by the desire to apprehend the murderer so authorities cease scrutinizing individuals with criminal records. Simultaneously, the killer himself—a nervous man named Hans Beckert—fuels widespread panic by sending a letter to local newspapers, triggering a compelling sequence where law enforcement employs early forensic methods to identify him.

Beckert’s letter mirrors the attention-seeking tendencies seen in several real-life serial killers. This behavior can be traced back to Jack the Ripper, who allegedly sent taunting letters to London police. In later decades, the Son of Sam and the Zodiac Killer continued this tradition, publishing their own communications and cultivating larger-than-life personas that fed into the idea of serial killers as celebrities with twisted desires.

Fritz Lang drew heavily from real events. The council of pragmatic crime lords in M was inspired by Berlin’s version of the mafia, known as the Ringvereine. Lang also referenced high-profile homicide cases that dominated headlines in early 20th-century Germany, including multiple notorious child murders, as well as the actions of serial killers such as Carl Großmann and Fritz Haarmann.

In a 1931 article, Lang discussed his interest in how society responds to such crimes, stating, “There is a strange similarity of events, circumstances that repeat themselves almost as if natural laws were at work, such as the dreadful psychotic fear of the general public, the self-accusations of the mentally inferior, denunciations unleashing the hate and jealousy that have built up over years of living side by side, attempts to feed the police investigators false leads, sometimes on malicious grounds and sometimes out of excessive zeal.” These dynamics unfold throughout M, as the city descends into paranoia.

Lorre’s unsettling portrayal of Hans Beckert launched his subsequent career in Hollywood, where he frequently played sinister characters. To modern viewers, his creepy demeanor may seem dated, but it remains effective. Overall, however, M still feels remarkably fresh, surpassing conventions of procedural thrillers that emerged decades later.

Instead of focusing on a single investigator, M provides an almost anthropological perspective of a city gripped by fear. We first encounter Berlin through the eyes of children—Beckert’s potential victims. Lang then broadens our viewpoint to include groups of police officers, criminals, and beggars, with the latter forming an unofficial surveillance task force during the manhunt. Organized crime and law enforcement operate within the same ecosystem, temporarily uniting to confront a common threat.

M is often cited as an inspiration for later serial killer films like Se7en, Silence of the Lambs, and Zodiac. Alternatively, its influence can be traced back to Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 kidnapping drama High and Low, which similarly delves into procedural logistics. Today, such crime stories are typically simplified for television formats like CSI and Law & Order, but Kurosawa and Lang created theirs long before those investigative tropes became standardized.

In M, there is a clear antagonist but no obvious hero, giving equal screen time (and even sympathy) to both police and criminals united by the same objective. Although Beckert is ultimately captured, the film maintains an ambivalent stance toward whether true justice can be achieved. Even if the manhunt succeeds this time, the victims remain dead, and the city lacks any real defense against the next killer who might emerge, driven by impulses beyond anyone else’s comprehension.

M is currently streaming on HBO Max.