Fritz Lang – Introduction
Fritz Lang was a German film director in the 1920s who in the 1930s moved to Hollywood. On both sides of the Atlantic he created some of the most enduring masterpieces of cinema – Metropolis; M; Fury; The Big Heat. To get you started we return to our trusted Encyclopedia Britannica.
Encyclopedia Britannica – Fritz Lang
Your discussion task: What makes Lang such an important figure in cinema?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
M
The film M (also known as M – A City Searches for a Murderer) was released in 1931 and is now considered a classic of German cinema. The link below takes you to a short article about the film as well as to an embedded YouTube video of the film.
Your discussion task: Watch the film, and in the discussion try to come up with the main point the film is making. To make your case, refer to a scene that illustrates this point.
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Interpretations of M
This essay gives a very good summary of Lang’s film, and then it provides three different avenues for interpretation: the film’s relationship to modernity; the film’s portrayal of different forms of justice; the use of sound.
M – A Modernism Lab Essay (If that link doesn’t work, click here.)
Your discussion task: Which of these interpretive strategies resonates most with you? Or are there other interpretations you think are worthwhile discussing?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Film noir
Film noir (French for “black film”) is a term used to describe films from the 1940s and 1950s. Have a look at this definition from the Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory:
A film movement—or, better yet, film style—that began in the US in the early 1940s and persisted until the late 1950s. The term was created by French film critics by analogy with roman noir, the French term for hard-boiled crime novels. Following the end of World War II large quantities of American films were imported into France, forcing French critics to take notice of Hollywood productions whereas previously they had written them off almost as a matter of course. John Huston’s 1941 film of Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon (1930) is widely considered the first film noir, but Marcel Carné’s prior Le Jour se lève (1939) also has a claim on this title. In both cases, there is also an obvious influence of 1920s German Expression, not the least because many of the most important film noir directors were in fact German émigrés (e.g. Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Douglas Sirk, and Max Ophuls). Although it is predominantly associated with detective thrillers, there are also film noir westerns and melodramas, so it cannot be considered a genre in the true sense of the word.
Stylistically, it is typified by three distinctive characteristics: first, and most prominently, its visual style is characterized by stark contrasts between light and dark used to symbolize ‘good’ and ‘evil’; second, its narratives are morally ambiguous, frequently ending on a bathetic ‘winner loses’ note; third, its characters are of a limited variety of stereotypes—the grotesque villain, the beautiful but flawed femme fatale, and the emotionally damaged hero who seeks for justice in an unjust world, even if he has to break the law to do it. The best-known example, in this regard, is undoubtedly Howard Hawks’s 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1939), starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Film noir has been of particular interest to film critics interested in psychoanalysis because its stories seem to be more about the complexities of human sexuality than their ultimately mundane crime and punishment plots. Because of the way the femme fatale uses her sexuality and breaks with the Hollywood convention of depicting women as passive (mother, whore, wife, or mistress), she has been subject to considerable theoretical attention. Film noir has also drawn the attention of film critics interested in the relationship between film and architecture because of its intensely urban character and the way it represents buildings.
Your discussion task: Fritz Lang’s film M is often considered to be a “proto-film noir,” that is to say, a precursor of the film noir. How well do you think the film fits the definition of film noir?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
The End of M
The film M ends with a “court scene”: members of the underground try Hans Beckert for his crimes, and he defends himself by more or less saying that he can’t be held responsible for crimes that are the result of his mental disturbances. Just as the “court” is about kill Beckert, the police arrive, and Beckert is then tried by an official German court. The film closes with three grieving mothers, one of whom addresses the camera and comments on the official verdict by saying: “This will not bring our children back to life. People should take better care of their children.”
Your discussion task: How do you read these last few scenes of the film? Is it encouraging viewers to take justice into their own hands? Is it placing responsibility on citizens that should belong to the authorities (e.g. protecting children from harm)?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Specific Instructions for this Review: Lang
Many contemporary critics who review Lang’s film M often agree on one point: that the film is surprisingly modern in its treatment of themes like child murder, surveillance, life in the city, the similarity between organized crime and the authorities. In this Module Review I want you to address this question: Is M a film that has something to say to or about society today? If you think the film does speak to contemporary society, explain how; if you don’t, explain why not.
As always, feel free to make use of the content items in the module and the postings of your classmates when composing your answer.
600-750 words
General Instructions for the Module Reviews
Please keep the following in mind:
- your answer should be uploaded as a Word document. If you don’t have Word, please save your answer as a .docx file in the word processor of your choice.
- your answer should be double-spaced.
- no title page, but there should be a title, your name should appear at the top, and there should be page numbers.
- answers should be within the specified word range.
- good essays have grammatically-correct sentences, coherent paragraphs, no spelling mistakes, and a clear argument or point.
Please note: the question may ask you to make use of the discussions that occurred in the module. There are two modes for viewing the discussion forums, GRID VIEW and READING VIEW. (You can change which you view by clicking on the settings – the gear icon – in the upper right-hand corner of your screen when you’re in the Discussions area of the course.) Play around with the two views to find the setting that works best for you. For example, when I’m reading your discussions during the week and commenting on some of them, I use the READING VIEW, but if I have to read and grade a lot of postings I use the GRID VIEW.