M

Austrian-born Fritz Lang made M in Germany where it premiered in May 1931 before being banned by the Nazis three years later. In 1940, parts of the film were appropriated by the Nazis in their propaganda film Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) contorting Peter Lorre's soulbaring performance for anti-Semitic ends. In retrospect, many believe M hastened Lang's departure from Germany in 1934. Lang often spoke of how the Nazis were offended by the film's original title, Murderers Among Us (assuming it was about them). He also spoke of the difficulty getting permission to make the film at the studios where it was eventually made in its entirety, but Lang scholars believe he often embellished the truth. Inconsistencies in many of his stories over a number of years have led many historians to view Lang's anecdotes with a pinch of salt. In many interviews Lang spoke of being offered the position "head of National Socialist Film" by Goebbels and Hitler, but there is no evidence of a Lang meeting in Goebbels' complete appointment calendar or diaries (which survived the war intact). Of course, it could have happened, the truth is that we probably will never know.

M was re-edited and re-released in 1960 with additional sound effects yet without Lang's approval. Parts of this 1960 "abortion" found their way into the 1995 restoration which is the version widely available on VHS and DVD in the West - until now that is. Eureka (UK) have released a fine 2 x DVD set of film restorer Martin Koerber's 2001 restoration (which he put together for the Berlin Film Festival). This most recent restoration combines new material combed from archives all over Europe to obtain the best possible picture and the most complete version seen since 1931. A German DVD of this latest restoration was released by UFA/BMG in 2002 (without English subtitles). The new Eureka DVD builds on this film restoration with extensive digital restoration supervised by Torsten Kaiser and carried out by IML in Australia (further discussed in the chapters The Koerber Restoration and The Eureka DVD below).

M is a fiercely intelligent overview of an entire town's attempt to hunt down the serial child killer in their midst. Lang's first sound film effortlessly blends noir, German Expressionism, social commentary, and documentary with a (little discussed) keen nose for humour. Combining a God's eye view of the police procedural, separate attempts by the town's underworld to stop the killer, and insight into the killer's own world, Lang weaves these disparate elements into a highly intelligent meditation on capital punishment. Without preaching or espousing one viewpoint over another, Lang transparently lays everything on the table for the audience to make up their own minds. The unexpected and thoroughly brave ending is one of the most memorable in movie history. Critic Stanley Kauffman wrote, "M is more engaging of the eye, more incisive in its irony, more firm in its grasp of social complications than most of the films that come along today." Lang's intention was for M to be a wake up call for parents. Rather than focus on the whodunnit and subsequent hunt for the murderer, Lang highlighted the serial killings of children as preventable, something we could protect against by knowing where our children are at all times. Lang bravely shows the internal frustration of Lorre's character and questions the use of capital punishment for such an illness, a sentence that was served on Peter Kürten (The Vampire of Düsseldorf), a child murderer who rocked Germany a few years earlier.

The original camera negative (which makes up the bulk of this restoration) was incomplete - an entire reel had apparently been replaced with an acetate dupe over 30 years ago. Original Dutch, German and Swiss (Cinematheque Lausanne) nitrate prints from 1931 were used to fill the holes (the Dutch and German prints had German audio; the Swiss print had French audio.) According to Koerber, some scenes were found in an Amsterdam print that were not in any of the other prints. Unfortunately there is no surviving script for the film, but Koerber had the original censor card to work from. This contained complete dialogue for the film and provided invaluable continuity to work from. Unfortunately it doesn't tell us definitively whether a scene had sound or not.

There is no music at all in Lang's original version (other than Lorre's character Beckert whistling Grieg - which was actually performed by Lang himself) but the post-war 1960 version added music, using the whistling over the opening titles.

Martin Koerber supervised the film restoration from various 35mm negative and dupe elements to create a brand new 35mm archival protection fine grain master print. Torsten Kaiser worked with telecine operator/colourist Ulrich Buchschmid in Munich on a High Definition Spirit Datacine system to correct grayscale and density of the film frames - 630 corrections were made. Peter Campbell of IML in Melbourne, Australia cleaned 18,000 frames by hand on the basis of Kaiser's recommendations. Commendably, the idea was to correct large problems whilst retaining film grain and the feel of celluloid. They did not use a wetgate process nor any automatic DVNR software in the preparation of the DVD.

For the first time, this restoration of M presents the film in its original "pillarbox" AR of 1.19:1 (an AR used widely between 1928-1932, but often cropped to 1.33:1 for convenience in later years. NOTE: the screenshots above, taken from the end of the Eureka DVD, contain a typo incorrectly stating the AR to be 1.9:1). Whilst still showing occasional signs of age, the print is nothing short of amazing. After seeing the restoration documentary on the disc and having a good look at before and after examples with the digital restoration software it becomes clear just what poor shape many scenes were in. Some frames had more damaged information than undamaged information. Even earlier DVDs (such as Criterion's) had huge defects like a line running across the top of the frame (which they mostly avoided by cropping to 1.33:1, although their transfer has varying AR). See DVDBeaver for a fine comparison of all three current M DVD issues.

It's often easy to forget just how hard some films were to get hold of ten years ago. Torsten Kaiser (of the Laser Examiner) - who also curates the Eureka DVD commentary track - writes that M was one of the most prized titles on Laserdisc, demanding record prices on the secondhand market until around 1995, "The old releases of the film were in poor quality at best. Extremely poor VHS releases flooded the market that were, like the Vestron LD, incomplete in duration and based on degenerated 16mm prints that were mostly overexposed."

The extras on the Eureka set are plentiful. The commentary is presented by Torsten Kaiser and he introduces pertinent snippets of interviews with Martin Koerber, Peter Bogdanovich and an archive recording of Bogdanovich interviewing Lang in the 1960s. More of this archive recording is also on disc 2 and although not very well recorded (it was originally intended for research only), it is priceless not only because of the informal and revealing content but because the original tapes were decomposing (the original Bogdanovich tapes were over 8 hours long). In addition to the commentary on disc 1 is a 23 minute restoration documentary presented by digital restoration supervisor Peter Campbell. It's fascinating to see him working on the computer demonstrating the powerful software suite he uses, but it's a shame that the sound recording of this piece is so amateurish (seemingly utilising an inbuilt camera mic). He is audible throughout but is jarringly distant.

Disc 2 contains a gem found in the German archives Zum Beispiel: Fritz Lang (For Example: Fritz Lang). It was prepared for DVD using the same equipment as the main feature and is a very interesting interview between a talkative Lang and an uncomfortable-looking German host (Erwin Leiser). Kaiser mentions in his commentary that Lang's interview here is filled with many statements that are probably more fiction than fact considering the inconsistencies in Lang's statements over a period of time.

Other extras include a visual essay by R. Dixon Smith called Lending Order To Terror, text features about Nero Film, a fascinating Koerber piece about the film restoration, storyboard to screen comparisons, photo galleries, pressbooks, stills, filmographies, biographies etc. The entire 2 disc set is a very enjoyable treasure trove linked together with some of the nicest menus I've ever come across in the DVD world.

Eureka's forthcoming slate looks incredibly rosy; more Lang, Dreyer, Murnau, Pabst, etc. If they can maintain this level of quality they are providing an incredible service for cineastes.

Many people will be watching this new DVD set and seeing M for the first time - how lucky they are! It is cause for celebration that such a fine release as this exists - viewing it was a magical experience.
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