With the oppressive child murderer story M – A City is Looking for a Murderer, director Fritz Lang created an important classic. In the Moviepilot list of the best films of all time, M comes in at number 26. If you do Masterpiece based on a true story from 1931, you can stream the milestone right now.
That’s what M is about – A city is looking for a murderer
Fritz Lang’s classic is set in Berlin in the 1930s, where child murderer Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) causes one victim after another. Since the police cannot track down the perpetrator, the law teams up with criminals to finally catch Beckert and carry out the just punishment at a tribunal.
The story of M – A city is looking for a murderer is based on the true story about the serial killer Peter Kürten, who was in the headlines as the “Vampire of Düsseldorf” and was executed three weeks before the film’s premiere. He is said to have sometimes drunk the blood of his victims or tried to. That makes M one of the best films of all time
For his masterpiece, the Metropolis director meticulously researched and visited prisons and psychiatric hospitals in order to create a psychologically complex profile of his film perpetrator. M – A City Looking for a Murderer not only dealt with social issues such as vigilantism and the role of the rule of law.
Lang also shot his work as a sound film for the first time. In addition to the perfectly composed images, he used for M striking sound effects like the serial killer’s whistle, which ultimately becomes his undoing.
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