“At sev­en­teen I ran away from home. I think every decent per­son should run away from home.”

M remind­ed me what a Fritz Lang nut I am. I’ve seen the Mabuse pic­tures, Metrop­o­lis of course and a few of his Amer­i­can pro­duc­tions, but M real­ly is some­thing else. Peter Lor­re’s per­for­mance alone — so expres­sive, so anguished, so enrap­tured — is unlike any­thing you’d ever see on Law & Order: SVU or Date­line or any oth­er fear-mon­ger­ing info­tain­ment. Hor­ri­fy­ing, yet strange­ly sym­pa­thet­ic, Lang presents a film that presents, as he says in his inter­view with William Fried­kin, a “social evil,” with­out delv­ing into an argu­ment over right or wrong.