Directed by Fritz Lang • 1931 • Germany
A simple, haunting musical phrase whistled offscreen tells us that a young girl will be killed. "Who Is the Murderer?" pleads a nearby placard as serial killer Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) closes in on little Elsie Beckmann... 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.
Listen closely: Fritz Lang’s claustrophobic thriller has one of the densest, most skillfully layered soundtracks in all of early sound film.
Directed by Claude Chabrol • 1982 • France
For the television program “Ciné parade” in 1982, Claude Chabrol was asked to inaugurate a series of contemporary homages to classic cinema. Chabrol—himself often a director of tense psychosexual dramas—chose the ur-thriller M. In this short, a sort of ...
