M就是凶手

说实话,前1/4段的时候很闷,我都想关了睡觉,但是后来越来越好看,到最后简直兴奋到不行,才发现这确实是一部经典的影片

一个外貌胆怯又平常的男人,以各种方式骗走并杀害了九个小女孩
这样的罪行伴随着他那独一无二的口哨声印刻在了观者的心里(他估计最后死也没想到是这个口哨声暴露了他)
全城的市民如惊弓之鸟,城市秩序几乎都要到了崩溃的边缘,警察局日夜忙碌不堪依然一无所获("现在连享受十分钟的宁静都成了奢侈")
大段对上司诉苦的描述可以让我们感受到拖网式查案的艰难和绝望,警察们似乎已经完全束手无策了

而这时比较囧的事情发生了,由于警察们疯狂地检查和搜索,黑帮们"正常"的生意和行动全部被打乱,简直没法过日子
眼看着抓不到凶手自己的生活就要完蛋了,黑帮们终于忍无可忍决定自己也去把这凶手找出来泄愤
于是,奇妙的事情发生了:白道和黑道无意中达成一致,一起来拼命寻找这个注定该死的人

下面的故事就开始让我觉得好笑了
黑道买通了丐帮,让他们负责搜寻凶手的下落
这效率真快啊,他们不仅神速地找到了凶手,还在他身上留下了记号,甚至还满大街追着他跑并把他逼进了死胡同
黑帮在夜晚用计闯进了凶手躲藏的大楼,蚂蚁一样地搜遍了全楼把凶手找了出来(最后警察来之前他们坚持到最后一刻抓到凶手才走,实在是太敬业了XDDD)

警察来了,查看了现场,开始大惑不解:
来了一堆黑帮,把全楼都找遍了,撬了锁挖了坑,最后一点值钱的东西也没有拿走,甚至整栋楼没有丢一样东西,这到底是为什么呢?
后来听说是抓走了一个人,那么是什么人值得黑帮大动干戈呢?
警察来的时候只发现了一个没离开大楼的黑帮分子
这人顽固不堪,硬是不肯交代黑帮到底在楼内找谁
结果警察头子用计对他一恐吓,居然发现黑帮找到的人是那个让他们焦头烂额的凶手,于是震惊了

而在黑帮这里,审讯开始了
凶手瞪着大眼发现在地窖里居然有几百号人悄无声息虎视眈眈恶狠狠地盯着他
逃是没用的,黑帮开始对他进行控诉
其实真的很囧,这时我怎么看都觉得黑帮那就是一正义的法庭啊口胡
凶手大呼黑帮不懂法律,黑帮冷笑着说"我们很多人坐过十几年的牢了,还不明白怎么审判嘛?!"
凶手这时尖叫着要他们把他交给警察,说要从法院判刑他才心甘情愿
黑帮头子冷笑着说"你想得美,我们现在不把你干掉,你早晚会找个理由从牢里出来,到时候再去追袭无辜的小女孩是吧?"
黑帮的人很聪明:把他送进牢子,他不仅死不了还要花纳税人的钱养着他,而且万一以精神有问题逃脱了法律的制裁那后果就更不堪设想了
"你以为我们傻啊?你今天哪里也别想去,就死在这里吧!"

一群罪犯对一个罪犯进行的庄严审判,真是快意得淋漓尽致
黑帮陪审团对凶手激昂的控诉和指责让观者亦被正义的力量所洗礼.....
正义,果然是可以以任何形式从任何人手中表现出来的

而且,这黑帮果然敬重法律........居然还依照程序法在黑帮里给他指派了一位辩护律师.......我囧大了我.......这叫黑帮吗............根本就是法律神圣的执行者...........

最后,警察在黑帮群情激奋的人们快要把凶手打死的时候出现了-v-
我相信凶手见到警察的时候一定在想"终于得救了!".....-v-+

值得一提的是,这个凶手演得太好了,他的惊恐的面孔和声嘶力竭的辩解真是让人印象深刻............一个让人难以忘怀的精神病杀人犯

M
1.悬念，铺陈人物2.悬赏单上的影子3.口哨声4.谁是凶手？5.人心浮动6.场景都极设计感7.无声音的一段8.对体制执行者的不满9.人心惶惶10.镜头角度很独特11.反射镜里的神魂颠倒12.背上的M13.快镜头14.兴师动众15.长镜头平摇16.瞎子发现真相17.民间审判18.我们就是你的权利19.我在追逐着我自己20.强迫性杀手21.以法律之名，以百姓之名22.举手投降23.德国表现主义

        Fritz Lang, one of the most celebrated auteurs of Germany's national cinema, lays out a chilling crime story in M(1931). In this provocative motion picture, a search for the cruel child murderer, Beckert, drives the whole city to turmoil. As all members in the city become involved in the search for the criminal, two different forms of human abnormality lurked in the city are exposed: the criminal mentality as well as the conflict between the institutional authority and the general public of which it is in charge. While the search continues, both forms of human abnormality keep growing unchecked; yet, eventually, the citizens identified with such abnormality have to face the catastrophic consequences of their behavior. Through innovative use of sound and provocative editing techniques, Lang points to the city as the foster home of both forms of human abnormality. Furthermore, he invites the audience to question the unforeseen detriments of a city in modernity that all its members eventually have to confront.

        As Lang's first film with sound, Lang ingeniously manipulates this new technology to portray the city as an adoptive home of human abnormality. At the very beginning of the film, before any image appears on screen, the audience first hears a child singing a familiar tune: “Wait, wait just a little while/ then the black man will come after you/ with his little chopper/ he will make mince meat out of you.” According to Todd Herzog, this tune is a homage to the “Haarmann song” that tells the chilling crimes of the notorious serial killer Fritz Haarmann. Herzog believes that this song serves to, “locate M in a specific historical context, the world of the Weimar Republic at the time of the film's release, and to place it in dialogue with that world”(Herzog, “Fritz Lang's M(1931), An Open Case”, P232). Nevertheless, Fritz's use of this song to begin the film allows a different interpretation. As the film begins with the dark screen and the nursery rhyme, an image soon appears in a few seconds. A medium shot locates the source of the sound in the yard of a mietskascerne, where a group of kids are playing and singing. By placing the source of the cruel tune in the mouth of a naïve child, Lang further implies that the modern city has become a sink of iniquity, even for the innocent who have yet to understand the city in which they are situated. The victim of today is just as likely to become the perpetrator in the future.

        Beckert's whistle is a repetition in the film which symbolizes his criminal mentality. Each time when he begins to whistle, the audience witnesses the awakening of the monstrous murderer within him. Thus far, Lang constantly shifts the source of the whistle from on-screen to off-screen; such manipulation of the sound source sheds light on the unlikelihood to locate the specific origin of human abnormality in a modern milieu. In a scene when Beckert stands on the street and looks into a shop-window, the sequence is accompanied with no diegetic sound. All what the audience can see is that Beckert dramatically changes his facial expression when he sees a little girl in the reflection of the shop-window. As the girl walks away, the camera moves out of the shop to the street and captures Beckert staring in the direction that the girl is walking. The audience then hears the diegetic sound of the street traffic, and Beckert's whistle simultaneously joins in as he starts following the girl and walks out of the frame. In the next medium-long shot, the camera tracks the little girl as she walks on the street. The whistle continues in the background; however, Beckert no longer appears on-screen in this tracking shot. While the audience has been led to believe that the whistle comes from Beckert by the previous shot; Lang purposefully leaves the established sound source off-screen in the following shot, which leads the audience to question whether Beckert himself is the source of his abnormality, or if the city is that with which has fostered his brutal crimes.

        Lang further manipulates sound to create off-screen space that contrasts the on-screen image in order to depict another form of human abnormality: the revolt against the political authority. The conflict between the underworld business and the police points to a divergence between the authority and the public, which is previously kept in disguise by a seemingly stable social order. However, as Beckert's crimes disturb the social order and alarm the police, they immediately assume that the criminal must be someone from the underworld, and decide to break the ostensible peace and raid their gathering spots. One night, the police secretly surround one of the underworld's gathering place; in which the entire process is accompanied with no sound. The camera soon moves downstairs into the basement where people in the underworld business gather. As a woman shouts out that the police is here, everyone begins rushing towards the exit to leave the basement. In a medium shot, the camera awaits at the top of the stairs and looks slightly down as everyone starts running towards the camera. Among the frenzied noises, the audience first clearly hears a woman's scream as the policemen yell back at her; yet the entire action takes place upstairs in off-screen space while the shot remains still, featuring the panicking crowds. Soon, the police enter from the lower frame and gradually push the crowds back into the basement for investigation. The image on-screen contrasts the actions taken place in off-screen space; such contrast allows the audience to look beyond the images shown on-screen and picture the entire city, where its underlying instability and human abnormality are close to outbreak due to the police's disruption of a public order that does not solve social problems, but merely hides them unseen.

        Throughout the film, Long constructs several montage sequences which implicitly build cause-and-effect relationships between the modern city and human abnormality. In the beginning of the film, when Elsie's mother becomes worried about Elsie for having not returned home, a medium shot shows Elsie's mother walking towards the window and looking out. When she begins calling out “Elsie”, the image cuts to an aisle shot of the stairwell in the Mietskaserne. As the mother's cry echoes down the stairs, the audience then follows the camera to an empty space where people in the neighbourhood hang their laundry; Elsie is still absent on-screen. The sequence continues as it cuts to a close-up on the lunch table, where Elsie's seat remains empty. The grieving howl of the mother has now ended, yet the sequence did not until the audience are shown with two more shots: Elsie's ball rolling on the grass, and the ballon that the criminal Beckerd bought for Elsie entangled in the electric wires on the city street. In this sequence, Lang juxtaposes the mother's continuous calling for Elsie with discontinuity editing of on-screen images. The audience follows the mother as she searches for Elsie in all public spaces in the city where Elsie can possibly be; yet Elsie's ball and ballon at the end of the sequence tell audience that Elsie must have already been slaughtered by the murderer Beckerd. In this sequence, Lang associates the befalling of Elsie's tragic death with the city itself: the development of the modern metropolis not only enlarges the public space, but also catalyses crime and threat among the citizens.

        In another scene when the minister condemns the police chief on the phone for the police department's incompetence in finding the killer, Lang edits a flashback as the chief explains their difficulty. The editing of this flashback again connotes the unforeseen detriments of a city in modernity. When the chief tells the minister about a white paper bag that they found behind the hedge, a close-up on the paper bag gives the audience a clue that it is a candy wrapper, and the store's name was on the wrapper. Then, the image cuts to a close-up of a map of the city, in which circles and circles are drawn with a pair of compasses in increasing radius. While the search widens, the police interrogates owners of candy stores all over the city. However, all owners shake their heads and cannot remember who had bought the candy for little Elsie. As population increases, the city provides perpetrators the opportunity to disguise their abnormality and let it grow unchecked. The editing of this sequence connects the failure to identify the abnormal with the city itself.

        Lang further implies a cause-and-effect relationship between the city and another form of human abnormality, namely, the public and the institutional authority's revolt against each other. As both the leads of the underworld and the chiefs of the political institutions gather for two separate meetings to discuss their objectives on the case of Beckert, Lang uses cross-cutting to juxtapose both meetings. The heads of the underworld complain about the consistent police raids' harm to their business and decide to find the killer by themselves in order to resurrect their business. As the underworld head waves his hand, the shot cuts to the head of police's same action. The police simultaneously decides to continue their search for Beckert without the help of the public, by organizing more police raids and search among public spaces. While the underworld condemns the police for interfering the underworld's business, the police chief Lohmann also refuses to ask the public for help as he states, “Don't talk to me about the public helping, it disgusts me.” The cross-cutting technique invites the audience to contrast the underworld and the police's conflicting attitudes against each other. Such social conflict is another form of human abnormality that is against the democratic ideal of the Weimar republic.

        As the underworld collaborates with the beggars and has seized Beckerd from the building, together they leave the scene in a hurry. Lang then presents the audience with a montage sequence in which he rewinds the crimes that the underworld has just committed. The audience follows the camera into the room where both watchmen have been knocked out and tied up. Then, the sequence continues with still shots of the forcefully broken office door, the compartment's broken fences, and ends with the hole they have dug on the floor in order to make the crime scene look like a result of burglary. This montage sequence is shown with no sound, leaving the audience in contemplation of the underworld's motive and the destructions their abnormal behaviors have caused. The heads of the underworld are provoked to capture Beckerd not because that they find Beckerd's behavior immoral, but because the underworld's business is interrupted by the police's consistent raids. In turn, they decide to look for Beckerd without collaboration with the police, and purposefully commit a series of crimes in order to achieve their goal. The lack of stability in the city's social order has fostered the formation of the underworld, and the underworld's distrust with the political authority. Yet, their abnormal behaviors will lead them to their final conviction.

        The film ends with the final conviction of both the underworld and the child murderer. The audience should not forget that it is the underworld, despite their unrighteous motives, who has asked for help from the beggars and successfully seized Beckert. Nevertheless, both parties have to eventually face the catastrophic consequences of their abnormal behaviors. The first being the underworld's imprudent disruption of the public order for their own economic benefits, and the second being the brutal crimes that Beckert has committed. Throughout the film, Lang manipulates the sound effects and the editing of the sequences to point to the modern city itself as the very cause of all forms of human abnormality preeminent in it. The diegetic world in the film, which is the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, still echoes the modern milieu in which we live. However we try to trace any form of abnormality that hinders the public order, we are always led back to the society as the cause, without identifying the specific origin. Perhaps, the only way of prevention lies in the hands of the people who make up the society, with self-awareness of their behaviors, and positive objectives to make changes.
 
 
                                      Works Cited
 
Herzog, Todd. "Fritz Lang's M(1931): An Open Case." An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era Weimar Cinema. Ed. Noah Isenberg. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 291-309. Print.
 
M. Dir. Fritz Lang. Perf. Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut. Criterion Collection, 2004, DVD.