Berliner Geschichten: M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931)

With the Nazi party on the rise, Fritz Lang knew his days in the German capital were numbered and his film about the hunt for a child killer shows the director’s contempt for the status quo. He drowned his beloved city in dark shadows and casted grotesque looking character actors and Peter Lorre in an eye-popping performance as the titular killer, typecasting him for life as a villain. M is Lang’s first sound film and sports one of the earliest uses of voiceover narration. Lang interviewed actual murderers as research for the film and used many criminals as extras. A bleak but striking look at a city on the brink of moral collapse, M paved the way for the serial killer genre. Presented in German with English subtitles.