M

by Anton Kaes

Overview

Fritz Lang's 'M' (1931) is an undisputed classic of world cinema. Lang considered it his most lasting work. Peter Lorre's extraordinary performance as the childlike misfit Hans Beckert was one of the most striking of film debuts, and it made him an international star. Lang's vision of a city gripped with fear, haunted by surveillance and total mobillization, is still remarkably powerful today. And 'M' resonates too in the serial—killer genre which is so prominent in contemporary cinema. 'M' speaks to us as a timeless classic, but also as a Weimar film that has too often been isolated from its political and cultural context. In this groundbreaking book, Anton Kaes reconnects 'M''s much—studied formal brilliance to its significance as an event in 1931 Germany, recapturing the film's extraordinary social and symbolic energy. Interweaving close reading with cultural history, Kaes reconstitutes 'M' as a crucial modernist artwork. In addition he analyzes Joseph Losey's 1951 film noir remake and, in an appendix, publishes for the first time 'M''s missing scene.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839022913
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/25/2021
Series:	BFI Film Classics
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.45(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

Anton Kaes is Chancellor's Professor of German and Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He is the author of From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film (1989) and co—editor of The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (1994).

Table of Contents

Foreword to the 2021 Edition 6

Acknowledgments 14

Introduction 15

1 Berlin, 1931 18

2 Serial Murder, Serial Culture 38

3 Total Mobilisation 52

4 Before the Law 71

5 Los Angeles, 1951 98

Appendix: The Missing Scene 103

Notes 106

Credits 108

Bibliography 110