History of Film, Part 3: 1930-1939 • Page 2

I watched Fritz Lang's M tonight. Easy to see the influence this had on a lot of procedural / crime thrillers ever since.

Everyone's a suspect and everyone's a vigilante. There's a surveillance state and police state, that are completely hopeless in catching the killer.

Instead it's the underworld, the criminals out of find him, so they can return to their life of crime, undisturbed by the police. What we have is a city state, either side of the law, out to find one man, who is completely tearing apart the way they live. We have the final despairing speech from him, positioning himself as a symptom of societal malaise, while to the others in the room, he's the cause.

If I was an infamous and hunted child murderer, I probably wouldn't whistle a distinctive tune everywhere I went. Particularly if I had a face like Peter Lorre.