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8.8
/10
11,552 Ratings

M

Trailer
Directed by Fritz Lang
Germany, 1931
Crime, Drama

Synopsis

A madman (Peter Lorre) is stalking the streets of Berlin, abducting small children. As public hysteria mounts, both the police and the criminal underworld start to hunt him. Bit by bit, the net tightens…

Synopsis

M is not currently showing on MUBI. Instead, watch Metropolis, also directed by Fritz Lang.

Metropolis
Fritz Lang
M Directed by Fritz Lang
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Awards & Festivals

Berlin International Film Festival

1996

Locarno International Film Festival

1961

1976

National Board of Review

1933 | Winner: Top Foreign Films

Melbourne International Film Festival

1963

Show all (77)

Cast & Crew

Articles from the Notebook

Interview with Fritz Lang, Beverley Hills, August 12, 1972

The full transcript of a 1972 interview with the great director, who discusses his work in Germany and Hollywood,
Michael Gould and Lloyd Chesley
1

Movie Poster of the Week: The Top 10 Favorite Posters of La Boca’s Scot Bendall

The founder of the studio that brought you the King Kong and Black Swan posters chooses his own favorite designs.
Adrian Curry
4

The Forgotten: On the Hook

German theatre star Kurt Gerron directs this 30s thriller featuring Peter Lorre as a hunchbacked dope pedlar.
David Cairns

The Forgotten: Auld Lang Syne

Fritz Lang in Hollywood, running at New York’s Film Forum from January 28th to February 10th, offers the chance to get re-acquainted with…
David Cairns
6

Critics reviews

Show all (5)
A classic tale of catechizing human virtue in pre-Nazi Germany, Lang’s first talkie keeps us terrorized with onscreen dialogue and asynchronous off-screen sounds. The adumbral opening is flawless Expressionism—menacing cuckoos, leering abandonment and the awakening of sheer terror within one silhouette.
July 08, 2015
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If there’s one thing that Fritz Lang’s 1931 film M still teaches us, it’s that beyond all else, filmmakers should strive to place images on the screen that he or she sincerely believes will have never been seen before. An astounding hybrid of Bible-black film noir and a lithe take on German expressionist dynamics in which the shadows are literally out to kill you, there’s nary a shot in this film which (still) doesn’t feel as fresh as a new-growth daisy.
September 04, 2014
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To M’s towering credit, the murderer stares back at us in the mirror: This is a movie that dares to sympathize with a sick person, that risks making the monster real and us (in an era when Germany’s cinema was still shellacked in canted angles and fanciful shadows). When Lorre is thrown to the floor, wailing in a moment of capture, we see him as human, painfully flesh and blood. Lang doesn’t excuse this soul, nor does he turn him into some rarefied supergenius.
March 12, 2013
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