M (1931)

There is a child murderer loose on the streets of Berlin. The police presence, though massive, has so far failed to catch him but it is disrupting the rest of the city's underworld community. Disgusted by the murderer's actions and in an attempt get back to normal business the organised criminal syndicates decide to take action themselves to find, try and punish the killer.

Before taking the part of Hans Beckert, the child murderer, in Fritz Lang's ground breaking M, Peter Lorre had primarily been known as a comedic actor. It was this terrifying, sweating performance as the whistling killer that would redefine his career and lead him to roles in films like The Maltese Falcon and The Man Who Knew Too Much. It was this role however that was his crowning moment and it is widely celebrated as one of the greatest on-screen performances of all time.

Austrian director Fritz Lang was one of cinema's greats and the master of the cross-genera thriller. In the epic Metropolis he mixed social commentary on class distinction with science fiction and a love story, in Man Hunt he commented on Britain's lone stand against Nazism and in M he broke ground in featuring a psychopathic sexual murderer, the first time this had been done on the big screen. His use of light and sound are a lesson for any would-be director, using In The Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt was the first time a film character had their own theme. The supporting cast are great and all the more impressive for the fact that a lot of them were amateurs, real criminals and beggars and although it's not them in the movie there really was a beggars' union at that time in Berlin. It was also one of the first films to have a voice-over narrative.

Although the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels personally loved the film it was banned in 1931 because of the director and star's Jewish heritages. Kept in a vault in Germany it wasn't re-released until 1966.

This is not just one of the best of its time, it's one of the best ever made and anyone with a real interest in film should see it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022100/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_32