M

M is a 1931 German drama-thriller directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. It was Lang's first sound film, although he had directed more than a dozen films previously. The film has become a classic which Lang himself considered his finest work. The action opens with a group of children playing a game involving a song about a child murderer in the courtyard of an apartment building in Berlin. This foreshadows the appearance of Hans Beckert , a serial killer who preys on children. The longest part of the movie is concerned with the public's reaction to a series... of child murders, the frantic police investigation and, finally, the city's criminals, who organize their own manhunt because their criminal enterprises are being hampered by ever-present police activities. The audience sees Beckert only briefly until the second half of the movie; his presence is occasionally acknowledged by showing merely his shadow, shots of his body or the sound of his whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg. Beckert befriends Elsie Beckmann , a little girl playing with a ball.
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