The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - '"Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

       Here’s another film that’s been on the queue for years, and yet always managed to escape the list. Unlike with Wages of Fear however, we’re not dealing with an unknown here; This is Fritz Lang, director of Metropolis, also known as the film that I end up comparing every silent movie I’ve ever reviewed against, as well as Destiny, which wasn’t as good but still had moments of inspiration. Many directors go their entire career without making one film on the level of Metropolis, but just as many readers likely don’t realize that Metropolis was just one part of Lang’s storied career. A career which spanned several decades, continents, and genres, from the early days of silent film through the Golden Age of Hollywood all the way to the 60’s. In fact as much as I praise Metropolis, it’s arguably not Lang’s most lauded, most celebrated, most fondly remembered film -- this one is. So if I want to win any of those arguments, I better check it out for myself and see if that hype is real. Also I’m probably not actually going to argue, I just want to watch a movie.

       Released in Germany in 1931, M was directed by Fritz Lang, written by Lang and Thea von Harbou, and produced by Seymour Nebenzal through Nero-Film A.G. There’s a child murderer (Peter Lorre) loose in the streets of Berlin and the public is in an uproar. Accusations are thrown, people are being accosted and attacked on the street, and as usual the police’s way of handling it is heavy-handed and completely ineffectual. Well that’s not quite true, as the near constant bar raids and night patrols do raise the ire of Berlin’s criminal population. With their livelihood on the line the heads of the various syndicates decide to set up their own investigation in tandem with the police. As both sides of the law create a city-wide pincer movement it seems that the killer’s day are numbered, but you don’t become a serial killer in pop culture without being hard to catch. Moreover, if he is caught, who’s gonna get to him first?

       Film began as a principally visual medium, and Fritz Lang understood that better than most filmmakers. We can see that quite clearly in Metropolis with its elaborate effects, but we can see in M the kind of visual storytelling that Hitchcock would utilize in his thriller films. The scene of little Elsie Breckmann bouncing her ball against a pole where a notice of the murderer is posted, only to see that same ball roll slowly roll out a bush later on, a sign of the grisly act that has just taken place. Or during the scene where the murderer is running from his pursuers, and rather than making that shot look smooth the camera jostles as it races after him, coming to a stumbling stop as he turns towards us, compounding this atmosphere of panic. Hell, even the visual of the M, the brand which marks the killer for what he is, is a deceptively powerful look for how simple it is. While the film does have sound there’s a lot of it that is done in complete silence, and it really shows just how much a director can convey without saying anything. Not as dynamic as Metropolis, but powerful nonetheless.

       That’s not to say that the inclusion of sound here is just a gimmick, as it seemed to be in some early ‘talkies’, as Lang uses it quite distinctly in M. Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, originally written for the Henrik Ibsen play Peer Gynt takes on a sinister second life as the murderer’s favorite tune, and of course you couldn’t do Peter Lorre’s final speech justice without sound. It’s a bit strange that, rather than just having scenes being done without talking and leaving natural sound they are done with sound removed entirely, I don't know if that’s a matter of how it was preserved or what but it works. There’s not a wasted syllable in the bunch.

       Speaking of Peter Lorre, he is undoubtedly one of the highlights of this film. This was only his third ever film role, second ever credited, and he hits it out of the park. People talk up Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector, for good reason but I don’t know if anybody has ever embodied the concept of creepiness like Peter Lorre. You see him in M and you see on screen what you picture in your mind when you hear the words ‘child murderer’. The way he looks, the way he talks, how he smiles, Lorre’s every move and gesture arouses this feeling of anger in the viewer as naturally as blinking. His final speech is a powerful bit of acting, catching the viewer between the two extremes of pity and disgust. It’s no wonder he became a Hollywood staple for a couple decades after this, everything about him is iconic. That’s not to say that the rest of the cast were bad, there’s not a bad one in the bunch, but I don’t know if this film would be as strong as it was without the casting of Peter Lorre. It was a star-making kind of film and he was the star. 

What kind of film is M, though? I personally see it as a transitional film for Lang, between the German Expressionist movement that he helped to establish and what would become film noir. M’s subject matter is rooted in the underbelly of modern society, a film about criminals tracking down an even worse criminal, but there’s an aura of the bizarre about it that calls back to Fritz Lang’s origins. The directness of the visuals, the overpowering silence (intentional or otherwise), the weird little bits of humor the overwhelming weight of Lorre’s insane compulsions, while it’s not as out there as nightmarish as Expressionist classics like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari there’s still a surrealism that covers the film like a blanket. It’s a film with its feet in the past and the future, and you can see in it a throughline to Hitchcock and Batman and countless other pieces of art and media.

M receives the recommendation. While crime thrillers aren’t exactly an uncommon sight in film, it takes skill and vision to do it well, and Fritz Lang proves here that he is a skilled craftsman. While it’s not the grandiose cinematic experiment that Metropolis became, it’s a classic in its own right. Be sure to check this one out this Halloween if you’ve got a chance, it’s definitely worth the time. Maybe pair it with Psycho or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, make it a really wild night. I don’t know if it’d be fun, but it would be memorable.

Reelin' In The Years -- Frankenstein (1931), directed by James Whale

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Right On, Frankenstein!", by Death From Above 1979

       Years ago, when in a fit of youthful arrogance I decided to give this whole ‘movie review’ thing a try, the film I decided to choose to kickstart the whole affair was James Whale’s film Bride of Frankenstein, released by Universal Pictures in the year 1935. Proper logic, or at least good etiquette, might have suggested that I start with the original film in the series first. If Star Wars has taught us anything, it was that starting the middle of a story and then going backwards doesn’t work out too well after all. I had seen Young Frankenstein though, I had read Mary Shelley’s novel and I had good ol’ cultural osmosis, so I figured that was good enough and went through with it. And the rest is history, really bad history.

       Years later, when I decided to revisit old movies and old monsters, my mind naturally turned to Frankenstein. Rather than covering the original though I went with another sequel, the under-appreciated Son of Frankenstein. I believe my thinking at the time was that because I had already seen Frankenstein outside of the review process, which I believe I had at some point, then it was no longer a first impression and thus less legitimate of a review. Whether that’s the right mindset is also something I’ve considered, but when I compiling the missing years for the Reelin’ in the Years tour and discovered 1931 was one of those years, it seemed like fate was telling me it was finally time to close the book on this case. Taking a look back 1931 wasn’t a bad time for the cinema; Not only did you have Dracula, but Fritz Lang’s landmark crime thriller M, Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights, Robert Mamoulian’s City Streets, and on and on. Yet of all the films it could have been, it could only truly be Frankenstein.

        Released on November 21, 1931, Frankenstein was directed by Thunderblog alum James Whale, who would later work with Universal on Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and The Old Dark House. The screenplay was done by Francis Edward Farough and Garrett Fort, while the story was by John L. Balderston and Richard Schayer, obviously based on the novel by Mary Shelley as well as the stage play by Peggy Webling. I think by this point the plot goes without saying, but in case you’re going in blind, here it is: Dr. Frankenstein, a frustrated young genius in the field of medical science, decides the only way to prove his radical theories is to steal a bunch of body parts and organs, stitch ‘em all together and zap the whole thing till it comes to life. Which he does, and it works, only the brain he used was part the expiration date and the Monster ends up going nuts. Thus Frankenstein is moved to destroy his creation, questions are raised about mankind’s hubris, and it is finally determined that fire bad. Also if you live by a lake you should make sure your kids know how to swim.

       I don’t know if any adaptation of a work has proven so influential over a premise as Universal’s Frankenstein has been to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The whole idea of the Monster being created by stitching body parts together and zapping it to life with lightning comes from this film (although it’s technically not lightning that does it), as well as Karloff’s now iconic flat-top,bolt-necked appearance. There’s a few things that never really carried over; Frankenstein’s name being Henry rather than Victor (although there’s a character named Victor here just to make things confusing) for example, and ‘Henry’s’ hunch-backed assistant named Fritz would be largely be replaced by his hunch-backed assistant named Igor, but for the most part this film has informed 99% of everything Frankenstein going forward. Even films that try to look more period-appropriate or stick more closely take some measure of influence from this film, especially in regards to the creation of the Monster. So strictly from a historical perspective Universal’s Frankenstein has more than earned a recommendation, although that doesn’t necessarily say much about it as a movie beyond being the first past the post (aside from the one movie Edison did back in 1910). 

       As a movie then, Frankenstein feels a bit off. Rather than starting with ‘Henry’ Frankenstein’s origins and the building up to the act, we start in media res, with the Monster being brought to life almost immediately. Then immediately after that we jump into the Monster going crazy and all that, with characters and relationships just kind of happen. I assume that this is largely a result of the film being an adaptation of the stage play rather than the novel, but apparently this was in the days when adapting the theatre to the theater was still in its infancy. Lots of tell and not enough show, if you catch my drift.

       Of course Frankenstein is the role that introduced the world to Boris Karloff, in spite of the fact that his career started back in 1918, and seeing him here it’s easy why and how this version of the Monster became THE version of the Monster. Karloff would portray the Monster several times after this, but he’s never looked as good as he does here. The sunken cheeks, the lifeless eyes set in dark sockets, the way he stumbles and stomps about like his legs barely work, I don’t think even Night of the Living Dead captured the premise of a living corpse. He captures your eyes as soon as he gets on screen, and it’s surprising that such an iconic character doesn’t actually get all that much to do. Of course you’ve got the infamous scene with the girl at the lake, and a little bit of stuff when he’s introduced, but it’s not until Bride of Frankenstein that the Monster as a sympathetic character was fully established. For now he’s just a grunting weirdo in big shoes.

       We move on to Colin Clive then, whose inclusion in this film is also rather bittersweet in hindsight. Colin Clive’s portrayal of the titular Frankenstein is almost as iconic as that of Karloff’s, exuding an air of supreme arrogance and barely restrained mania, and his frantic shout of ‘It’s alive!” is easily one of the most famous lines in cinema. However, that Frankenstein only exists in the first third of the movie, the rest of the time he’s just Henry, the dude who’s just there. Even near the end of the film, the point which you’d think would be ‘Frankenstein is finally driven to destroy his creation’, and the film claims it as such, Frankenstein feels like an ancillary character through the whole thing. His entire climatic final showdown with the Monster amounts to him getting beat up and thrown off a balcony, and I’m not counting that as a spoiler because I covered the sequel almost a decade ago. At the very least you could say that they build the romance subplot between Henry and Elizabeth (played by Mae Clarke) better than we would see in The Invisible Man a few years later, even hinting at a love triangle with Victor. The very least is about the only way you could describe it too; Mae Clarke isn’t very good, she and Clive have zero chemistry, Victor is a plank of wood with a mustache drawn on it, and any hint of that triangle is dropped like a bag of rocks almost immediately. Frankenhooker was a more intriguing love story than Frankenstein.

       Let’s see, what else is Frankenstein remembered for...the German Expressionist inspired art design? Great, love the shot of Fritz walking down the dark and winding staircase, but again that only appears near the beginning and a bit towards the end. The laboratory? Same thing, and honestly done better by Mel Brooks in Young Frankenstein. The aforementioned infamous scene with the girl at the lake. Not in the beginning of the movie, but a scathing critique of mob violence if you felt like getting analytical. It’s kind of bizarre to think that so much of what makes this a defining film of the horror genre takes place before the first half hour. Like this is just as much about a wedding as it is about subverting the laws of nature.

       So I guess if you were really pressed for time, you could watch a clip or two and get the gist of it. In spite of my criticisms though, for its time Frankenstein is a fine film, and because of my history with the story and the history the film embodies it gets the recommendation. Of Universal’s Horror line it’s one of the better movies I’ve covered so far, if I were a grading kind of guy I’d probably place it below The Invisible Man but above The Mummy, and since it sets you up for Bride of Frankenstein (currently the best UH movie that I’ve covered) it’s a great deal. And once you’re done watching you can hop back on the Reelin’ In The Years tour bus, as we head for our next stop. It'll be a big step out of our comfort zone, but it’s a pretty big film too.