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Topic: M (1931 film)


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In the News (Thu 8 Jan 09)

  
  M - The Encyclopedia
In Unicode the capital M is codepoint U+004D and the lowercase m is U+006D.
M is a film and television rating used by the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification denoting that the film may contain material that requires a semi-mature perspective, it imposes no restrictions on who may view it.
In biochemistry, M is the symbol for methionine.
www.the-encyclopedia.com /description/M   (1532 words)

  
 M   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
M is also the title of a 1931 film by Fritz Lang, and its 1951 remake.
M is the name of a film from 1931 directed by Fritz Lang about a serial killer who preys on children; see M (1931 film).
In grammar, M is often the abbreviation for the male grammatical gender.
health.abcworld.net /M.html   (833 words)

  
 Classic-Horror Review of M (1931)
The film's was so successful that plans for a talkie remake were made - one stipulation of this being that the current silent version would be destroyed.
M is a movie that knows when silence is more effective than noise, and when a simple whistle, bell, or bang will set the audience off more than words words words.
The film begins with many quick cuts and a lot of montage work, then slows down as the forces at work in the movie close in on their ultimate prey.
classic-horror.com /reviews/m.shtml   (847 words)

  
 Compare Prices and Read Reviews on M at Epinions.com
M was originally intended to be entitled Murderers Among Us but Lang could not get access to any of the German film studios while his project carried that tentative title, because the Nazi’s interpreted it as referring to them.
Goebbels is said to have described the film as “fantastic, free of phony humanitarian sentiments.” While Lang’s treatment of the social context is subtle, Goebbels' comment indicates that he was not much of a film critic.
M was produced right at the time of the transition from silent films to sound films.
www.epinions.com /content_135537462916   (2548 words)

  
 Internet Archive: Details: M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder
M has had a incredible cinematic influence, on thrillers, on the genre of film noir, and on portraits of psychosis, but the film was almost quashed by Nazi authorities, as they did not care for the implications of its original title, Murders Among Us.
M is about the search for a child murderer in Berlin, and as the story, and the search progress, the high profile murderer begins to inhibit the lives of everyone from the Police, to the criminals, to innocent bystanders who are accused of being the murderer for even the slightest contact with any child.
This film featured the first scene where two different parties are talking about the same thing, and the conversation is continued between the two groups (for the dramatic touch, the two parties were the Police, and the Criminals both intent on finding the murderer to save their reputation).
www.archive.org /details/M_   (1161 words)

  
 Movie Review: M
The film opens with a group of children playing and singing a nursery rhyme, the lyrics of which tell of a man in fl who will take children who are naughty and chop them up.
Lang's superb film contrasts the gentle, almost child-like manner of the killer, as he gradually gains the trust of his victims, with the frantic nature of the police and criminal investigations.
In fact, the story was based on a real-life murderer, but since M featured a dark parody of law and order (when the criminals hold their own 'trial' of Becker) and examined the power of mob-rule, it may have caused discomfort amongst the followers of National Socialism.
www.fortunecity.com /lavendar/heat/435/m.htm   (1310 words)

  
 DPL: Fresh City Life: Black & White, Film Series: Beyond Black & White   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
A wondrous film, the closest evocation of a dream captured on nitrate that I can think of, it transcends its fairytale origins to tell a story through archetype and the whole of western mythology.
It challenges us to address film as a liquid medium as engaging and powerful as painting or music and it serves as an excellent portal through which we begin to discuss archetype as a universal language of love, dread, hope, and desire.
M is a groundbreaker on any number of fronts, but the real marvel is that this 1931 picture holds up today as a horror film about the loss of individual liberties and the obvious thought that the reason that victims of criminals aren’t given due process and civil rights is because they were victimized by...
www.denver.lib.co.us /programs/black/film.html   (613 words)

  
 week five essays ...   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
M is self-reflexive in its use of sound as a plot device.
Fritz Lang’s 1931 film, M, uses sound in a wide variety of ways, but mostly as a means to express emotions and sentiments.
Near the beginning of the film, when the graphologists are trying to decipher the murderer's handwriting, Lang cuts to a shot that shows the murderer examining himself in the mirror.
members.cox.net /necco2000/week05.htm   (2325 words)

  
 M (1931)   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
M follows the trail of a child killer (Peter Lorre), sought both by the police and the members of the underworld whose businesses are being effected by the investigation.
This film is ground-breaking for many reasons: It is Fritz Lang's first talking picture, it is one of the first in the serial killer genre and it was overtly anti-Nazi.
This film was banned in Germany shortly after it premiered, and Fritz Lang and Peter Lorre, both Jews, soon fled the country.
www.imdb.com /title/tt0022100   (574 words)

  
 Chicago Reader Movie Review
M is also a masterpiece structured with the kind of perfection that calls to mind both poetry and architecture and that makes even his disciples' classics seem minor by comparison.
M periodically uses that signature, the camera most often poised over the streets of the city at night--creating images that spell out the basics of noir long before anyone dreamed up that generic term.
Yet the film's climactic sequence occurs in a dark basement, and basements, subterranean caves, and dungeons are every bit as operative in Lang's vision as his overhead shots, defining the limits of his universe.
www.chicagoreader.com /movies/archives/0897/08087.html   (1636 words)

  
 M
M is an incredible portrait of a society at war with itself, killing itself from within.
In smoke-filled rooms the various levels are skillfully intercut – the executive level of cops, crime boss racketeers and big business all become indistinguishable as do the riff-raff and their street-level customers for bootleg love and hooch in the subterranean economy.
M’s symbolism as much as its absences speak volumes, especially of an alienated (stark geometric staircases shot from above) and de-personalised (empty spaces as the first child abduction is seen) world.
www.crimeculture.com /Contents/FilmReviews/M.htm   (832 words)

  
 Fritz Lang M vintage film still / Germany 1931
He also spoke of the difficulty getting permission to make the film at the studios where it was eventually made in its entirety, but Lang scholars believe he often embellished the truth.
M is a fiercely intelligent overview of an entire town's attempt to hunt down the serial child killer in their midst.
Critic Stanley Kauffman wrote, "M is more engaging of the eye, more incisive in its irony, more firm in its grasp of social complications than most of the films that come along today." Lang's intention was for M to be a wake up call for parents.
www.goantiques.com /detail,fritz-lang-vintage,1288029.html   (470 words)

  
 Modern Pea Pod :: Vol. 2 :: No. 2
It was film noir, of course, and if it took a group of French critics to coin the name, then the films' own latent eroticism, casual brutality, and bleak moral ambivalence was nevertheless formulated specifically to address the concerns of the American people at the cusp of WWII and then the Cold War.
The dramatic low-key lighting which was its most recognizable visual attribute stemmed from the German Expressionist cinema of filmmakers like Fritz Lang, whose 1931 film M and, to a lesser extent, his Dr.
For a while, film noir was the ideal medium to vent the fears and obsessions of a world beset with dangers.
www.modernpeapod.com /v2-2/noirintro.html   (1226 words)

  
 M (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
M is a 1931 German crime film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou.
M was the first starring role for Peter Lorre, and it boosted his career, even though he was typecast as a villain for years after.
Although sound had been used in films for several years before M, the film was one of the first to use a leitmotif, associating the "Hall of the Mountain King" with the Lorre character.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/M_(1931_film)   (947 words)

  
 Harvard Film Archive: People We Like
Although he preferred working in comedy, Lorre made his film breakthrough portraying a child murderer in M (1931) and quickly became typecast as a screen villain.
M captures the prevailing sense of despair and corruption of Germany in the early thirties in its portrayal of the pathetic killer (Brecht-trained actor Lorre in his film debut), who is hounded by an odd alliance of pursuers: the chief of police and the highly organized criminal underworld.
The plot, with its absurd twists and turns, is the cornerstone of the comedy: a group of crooked travelers concoct a scheme to fraudulently purchase a plot of uranium-rich land in Africa, but complications arise when their ship explodes and the group is stranded on a desert island, held captive by Arabs, and then arrested.
www.harvardfilmarchive.org /calendars/04_summer/lorre.html   (2135 words)

  
 Thriller and Suspense Films
If the genre is to be defined strictly, a genuine thriller is a film that rentlessly pursues a single-minded goal - to provide thrills and keep the audience cliff-hanging at the 'edge of their seats' as the plot builds towards a climax.
In mid-June, 2001, the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, California made its definitive selection of the 100 greatest American "heart-pounding" and "adrenaline-inducing" films of all time, as determined by more than 1,800 actors, directors, screenwriters, historians, studio executives, critics, and others from the American film community.
To be eligible, the 400 nominated films had to be U.S.-made, feature-length fiction films, whose thrills have "enlivened and enriched America's film heritage," according to the rules.
www.filmsite.org /thrillerfilms.html   (1996 words)

  
 eBay - Product Info - eBay — M, VHS and NR items on eBay.com.   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
Filmed in post-Weimar Germany during the infancy of the Nazi state, this tale of moral depravity serves not just as an allegory for the need of justice for all, but as an ominous foreshadowing of the sort of societal hysteria that leads to cultural witch hunts.
"M" is a 1931 German film from Fritz Lang, whose Metropolis inspired the cityscapes of Blade Runner, the Star Wars prequels and The Fifth Element.
Filmed in his native Germany, the film is in German with English subtitles.
product.ebay.com /M_W0QQfvcsZ1178QQsoprZ3106887   (905 words)

  
 Cinema History: Films from the Silent Era
The films on the list above represent the greatest achievements of the silent era, which ended--after years of experimentation--in 1929 when a means of recording sound that would be synchronous with the recorded image was discovered.
Few silent films were made in the 1930s, with the exception of Charlie Chaplin, whose character of the Tramp perfected expressive physical moves in many short films in the 1910's and 1920s.
One of the most unforgettable openings to a film is the opening scene from M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang.
www.tc.umn.edu /~yahnk001/film/cinema1.htm   (1386 words)

  
 M   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
In Fritz Lang's startling and exquisite film M, fear stalks the streets of Berlin in the form of a serial child murderer whose grisly accomplishments are so heinous even the criminal minds of the underworld want him dead.
M is the most dynamic profile of a serial killer in film.
Fritz Lang's M is one of the great philosophical films, primarily because its anger and message are not bogged down in pretentious overtones with crush the story of the film, rendering it almost unwatchable a second time.
www.rottentomatoes.com /m/1012928-m   (780 words)

  
 The Criterion Collection: M
In his harrowing masterwork M, Fritz Lang merges trenchant social commentary with chilling suspense, creating a panorama of private madness and public hysteria that to this day remains the blueprint for the psychological thriller.
M is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.19:1, a European process that is much narrower than the 4:3 monitor.
Those who are already acquainted with this unforgettable film will be enraptured by the new restoration and the bevy of fine extras.
www.criterionco.com /asp/release.asp?id=30   (582 words)

  
 Bright Lights Film Journal | Fritz Lang's M (1931)
M is based on the real-life case of child-killer Peter Kurten, the "monster of Dusseldorf," whose crimes of the 1920s were still recent enough to resonate in the viewer’s mind.
Typical of the director, the film sees the police and the criminals as indistinguishable, intercutting between parallel scenes of each strategizing on how to "kill the monster." Some of the police station footage has a fresh, almost documentary feel, as then-new technologies like fingerprint analysis are methodically examined.
It’s generally agreed that M was critical in hastening Lang’s departure from Germany in 1934.
www.brightlightsfilm.com /29/m.html   (747 words)

  
 M (1931) - Moviefone
M (1931) M on IMDb: Movies, TV, Celebs, and more...
Movies M (1931): find the latest news, photos and trailers, as well as local showtimes/dvd...
M (1931) - Cast & Crew, movie showtimes, plot, synopsis, exclusive features, trailers, clips, theater listings, reviews, message boards, dvd, videos, rentals and more on Moviefone.
movies.aol.com /movie/m-1931/22760/main   (150 words)

  
 M (1931)
The heart and soul of the film is Lorre, playing the role that typecast him for the remainder of his career.
Trapped between these two forces, the invasive aura of M the concept is diminished to M the man, a small, sweaty individual.
Thus M is a bridge between the silent and talkie eras, utilising methods from both to great effect.
www.film.u-net.com /Movies/Reviews/M1931.html   (846 words)

  
 Amazon.com: M: Video: Peter Lorre,Ellen Widmann,Inge Landgut,Otto Wernicke,Theodor Loos,Gustaf Gründgens,Friedrich ...   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
This riveting, 1931 German drama by Fritz Lang--an early talkie--unfolds against a breathtakingly expressionistic backdrop of shadows and clutter, an atmosphere of predestination that seems to be closing in on Lorre's terrified villain.
M is an important piece of cinema's past along with a number of Lang's early German works, including Metropolis and Spies.
There's also quite a bit of damage to the film, so there are quite a few hiccups in the film, and there's a white bar across the top of the screen for a major chunk of the movie.
www.amazon.com /M-Peter-Lorre/dp/0780018664   (2735 words)

  
 German Expressionism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity, betrayal, and other "intellectual" topics (as opposed to standard action-adventure and romantic films); the German name for this type of storytelling was called kammerspielfilm (chamber film in English).
However, the themes of Expressionism were integrated into later films of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in an artistic control over the placement of scenery, light, and shadow to enhance the mood of a film.
Woody Allen's 1992 film, Shadows and Fog, is a pastiche of expressionism, taking cues from several films, such as the plot of M (1931) and the look of Nosferatu.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Expressionism_(film)   (1026 words)

  
 Peter Lorre Summary
M (1931), which introduced him as a shadow falling across a reward poster and an off-screen voice, catapulted the actor into international fame as a notorious child murderer, forever confusing him in the public eye as a psychotic type.
A film contract with Columbia Pictures brought him and his wife, actress Celia Lovksy, to the United States in July of 1934.
In Germany he co-wrote, directed and starred in Der Verlorene (The Lost One) (1951), a critically acclaimed art film in the film noir style.
www.bookrags.com /Peter_Lorre   (2177 words)

  
 M (Restored) (1931) - Moviefone
M (Restored) (1931) - Moviefone M (Restored) (1931) - M (Restored) (1931) movie details.
M (Restored) (1931) - Synopsis - Moviefone M (Restored) (1931) plot summary and synopsis on Moviefone.
M (Restored) (1931) - Cast & Crew, movie showtimes, plot, synopsis, exclusive features, trailers, clips, theater listings, reviews, message boards, dvd, videos, rentals and more on Moviefone.
movies.aol.com /movie/m-restored-1931/18231/main   (146 words)

  
 Peter Lorre - Alfred Hitchcock DVD Wiki   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
When he arrived in Great Britain, his first meeting was with Hitchcock and by smiling and laughing as Hitchcock talked, the director was unaware that Lorre had a limited command of the English language.
During the filming of "The Man Who Knew Too Much", Lorre learned much of his part phonetically.
He did not much enjoy these films but they were lucrative both for the studio and for Lorre himself.
www.daveyp.com /hitchcock/wiki/Peter_Lorre   (521 words)

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