What makes his cinema especially fascinating is it's stylistic exactitude, with just the right amount of light and shadow, the rest left to choices in camera placement and editing. Resulting in a strange, restrained, even contradictory, expressionism which relies in part upon a horrible clarity. One which reflects individuals' fever-dream reasoning, distorted and beyond logic, finding meaning and purpose in people, events and objects that would seem insignificant otherwise. Unable to discern reality from delusion. Not an ascetic, but a modernist mystic whose faith lies in the anxiety, paranoia and cruelty of humanity.
The kaiser of cinema. This dude with a camera. Was as lethal as Pelé with a soccer ball. He was beyond genius. And his work on the US was as good as his "germanic" period. Love love love love love the man-soul behind the monocle.
M is a masterpiece, and no doubt an influence on Film Noir itself...but I still prefer his American noir films to his European films... The Big Heat is criminaly underrated, and I just finished watching Women in the Window...Very impressive.
the spiders (1919 & 1920) series are missing as well as harakiri (1919), das wandernde bild (1920) and vier um die frau (1921), you lazy mubi