Waiting For A Role

Ever since we’d took the time for Metropolis I’d thought to watch “M” with my older one as well. I seem to recall watching it in college on the big screen and being mesmerized, disturbed.  There are a number of versions with subtitles on Youtube and for someone like me without a Chinese Netflix account, it’s all rather straightforward to set it up.

“M” in 1931 is about five years further towards the Nazi takeover than Metropolis was in 1926.  Germany is both regimented and exacting.  Look at the people leave the factory office block en masse at 5:00PM.  Consider the detail with which the detectives carry out their work, scouring the city in ever wider concentric circles, for clues.  The faces, of the underclass or those of the bourgeoisie, all seem pasty and bitter, fleshy and unhealthy.  None more so than Peter Lorre himself, who’s repulsiveness is somehow amplified by his cherubic youth. 

The world they all live in seems to be in third trimester gestation with doom.  Both the underworld boss played by Gustaf Gründgens and the Inspector played by Otto Wernicke seem as if they’re waiting for a role, taking orders, giving orders in the Reich.   And it seems that both of these gentleman stayed out the war in Germany, appearing in films during the Nazi era. 

Director Fritz Lang whose mother was Jewish and despite this was offered a creative role in the Nazi regime by Joseph Goebbels, and Peter Lorre who born to a Jewish family, in contrast, both left Nazi Germany and eventually made careers for themselves in Hollywood where they lived out their days. 

 

I read that the next film that Lang made, “The Testament of Dr Mabuse”, was ironically banned by Goebbels as an incitement to “public violence,” and yet during the meeting he held with the director to inform him of this the Reich Minister of Propaganda offered him a job.  It was this offer that had Lang flee the country, shortly thereafter.  I think this last of his German films will be the one we consider next.  I’m not sure how long we’ll spend in this particularly dark eddy.