Vintage 1973 British Lorrimer Publishing \"M\" A Film by Fritz Lang (Peter Lorre) For Sale

M is a 1931 German mystery thriller film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert, a serial killer who targets children, in his third screen role. Both Lang\'s first sound film and an early example of a procedural drama,[2] M centres on the efforts of both a city\'s police force and its criminal syndicates to apprehend a serial child-murderer.[3]

The film\'s screenplay was written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. It features many cinematic innovations, including the use of long tracking shots and a musical leitmotif in the form of \"In the Hall of the Mountain King\", which is repeatedly whistled by Lorre\'s character. Lang regarded the film as his magnum opus,[4] and it is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time and an indispensable influence on modern crime and thriller fiction.[5][6][7]

An American remake under the same title, directed by Joseph Losey, was released in 1951.

In Berlin,[8] a group of children are playing an elimination game in the courtyard of an apartment building using a macabre chant about a child-killer. Frau Beckmann sets the table for lunch, waiting for her daughter Elsie to come home from school. A wanted poster warns of a serial killer preying on children, as anxious parents wait outside a school.

Elsie leaves school, bouncing a ball on her way home. She is approached by Hans Beckert,[9] who is whistling \"In the Hall of the Mountain King\" by Edvard Grieg. He offers to buy her a balloon from a blind street vendor, and walks and talks with her. Elsie\'s place at the table remains empty, her ball rolls away through a patch of grass, and her balloon gets briefly caught in the telephone lines overhead before blowing away in the wind.[10]

In the wake of Elsie\'s disappearance, anxiety runs high among the public. Beckert sends an anonymous letter to the newspapers taking responsibility for the child murders and promising that he will commit others. The police extract clues from the letter using the new techniques of fingerprinting and handwriting analysis. Under mounting pressure from the government, the police work around the clock. Inspector Karl Lohmann, head of the homicide squad, instructs his men to intensify their search and to check the records of recently released psychiatric patients, focusing on any with a history of violence against children.[11]