M就是凶手1931

说实话,前1/4段的时候很闷,我都想关了睡觉,但是后来越来越好看,到最后简直兴奋到不行,才发现这确实是一部经典的影片

一个外貌胆怯又平常的男人,以各种方式骗走并杀害了九个小女孩
这样的罪行伴随着他那独一无二的口哨声印刻在了观者的心里(他估计最后死也没想到是这个口哨声暴露了他)
全城的市民如惊弓之鸟,城市秩序几乎都要到了崩溃的边缘,警察局日夜忙碌不堪依然一无所获("现在连享受十分钟的宁静都成了奢侈")
大段对上司诉苦的描述可以让我们感受到拖网式查案的艰难和绝望,警察们似乎已经完全束手无策了

而这时比较囧的事情发生了,由于警察们疯狂地检查和搜索,黑帮们"正常"的生意和行动全部被打乱,简直没法过日子
眼看着抓不到凶手自己的生活就要完蛋了,黑帮们终于忍无可忍决定自己也去把这凶手找出来泄愤
于是,奇妙的事情发生了:白道和黑道无意中达成一致,一起来拼命寻找这个注定该死的人

下面的故事就开始让我觉得好笑了
黑道买通了丐帮,让他们负责搜寻凶手的下落
这效率真快啊,他们不仅神速地找到了凶手,还在他身上留下了记号,甚至还满大街追着他跑并把他逼进了死胡同
黑帮在夜晚用计闯进了凶手躲藏的大楼,蚂蚁一样地搜遍了全楼把凶手找了出来(最后警察来之前他们坚持到最后一刻抓到凶手才走,实在是太敬业了XDDD)

警察来了,查看了现场,开始大惑不解:
来了一堆黑帮,把全楼都找遍了,撬了锁挖了坑,最后一点值钱的东西也没有拿走,甚至整栋楼没有丢一样东西,这到底是为什么呢?
后来听说是抓走了一个人,那么是什么人值得黑帮大动干戈呢?
警察来的时候只发现了一个没离开大楼的黑帮分子
这人顽固不堪,硬是不肯交代黑帮到底在楼内找谁
结果警察头子用计对他一恐吓,居然发现黑帮找到的人是那个让他们焦头烂额的凶手,于是震惊了

而在黑帮这里,审讯开始了
凶手瞪着大眼发现在地窖里居然有几百号人悄无声息虎视眈眈恶狠狠地盯着他
逃是没用的,黑帮开始对他进行控诉
其实真的很囧,这时我怎么看都觉得黑帮那就是一正义的法庭啊口胡
凶手大呼黑帮不懂法律,黑帮冷笑着说"我们很多人坐过十几年的牢了,还不明白怎么审判嘛?!"
凶手这时尖叫着要他们把他交给警察,说要从法院判刑他才心甘情愿
黑帮头子冷笑着说"你想得美,我们现在不把你干掉,你早晚会找个理由从牢里出来,到时候再去追袭无辜的小女孩是吧?"
黑帮的人很聪明:把他送进牢子,他不仅死不了还要花纳税人的钱养着他,而且万一以精神有问题逃脱了法律的制裁那后果就更不堪设想了
"你以为我们傻啊?你今天哪里也别想去,就死在这里吧!"

一群罪犯对一个罪犯进行的庄严审判,真是快意得淋漓尽致
黑帮陪审团对凶手激昂的控诉和指责让观者亦被正义的力量所洗礼.....
正义,果然是可以以任何形式从任何人手中表现出来的

而且,这黑帮果然敬重法律........居然还依照程序法在黑帮里给他指派了一位辩护律师.......我囧大了我.......这叫黑帮吗............根本就是法律神圣的执行者...........

最后,警察在黑帮群情激奋的人们快要把凶手打死的时候出现了-v-
我相信凶手见到警察的时候一定在想"终于得救了!".....-v-+

值得一提的是,这个凶手演得太好了,他的惊恐的面孔和声嘶力竭的辩解真是让人印象深刻............一个让人难以忘怀的精神病杀人犯

        Fritz Lang, one of the most celebrated auteurs of Germany's national cinema, lays out a chilling crime story in M(1931). In this provocative motion picture, a search for the cruel child murderer, Beckert, drives the whole city to turmoil. As all members in the city become involved in the search for the criminal, two different forms of human abnormality lurked in the city are exposed: the criminal mentality as well as the conflict between the institutional authority and the general public of which it is in charge. While the search continues, both forms of human abnormality keep growing unchecked; yet, eventually, the citizens identified with such abnormality have to face the catastrophic consequences of their behavior. Through innovative use of sound and provocative editing techniques, Lang points to the city as the foster home of both forms of human abnormality. Furthermore, he invites the audience to question the unforeseen detriments of a city in modernity that all its members eventually have to confront.

        As Lang's first film with sound, Lang ingeniously manipulates this new technology to portray the city as an adoptive home of human abnormality. At the very beginning of the film, before any image appears on screen, the audience first hears a child singing a familiar tune: “Wait, wait just a little while/ then the black man will come after you/ with his little chopper/ he will make mince meat out of you.” According to Todd Herzog, this tune is a homage to the “Haarmann song” that tells the chilling crimes of the notorious serial killer Fritz Haarmann. Herzog believes that this song serves to, “locate M in a specific historical context, the world of the Weimar Republic at the time of the film's release, and to place it in dialogue with that world”(Herzog, “Fritz Lang's M(1931), An Open Case”, P232). Nevertheless, Fritz's use of this song to begin the film allows a different interpretation. As the film begins with the dark screen and the nursery rhyme, an image soon appears in a few seconds. A medium shot locates the source of the sound in the yard of a mietskascerne, where a group of kids are playing and singing. By placing the source of the cruel tune in the mouth of a naïve child, Lang further implies that the modern city has become a sink of iniquity, even for the innocent who have yet to understand the city in which they are situated. The victim of today is just as likely to become the perpetrator in the future.

        Beckert's whistle is a repetition in the film which symbolizes his criminal mentality. Each time when he begins to whistle, the audience witnesses the awakening of the monstrous murderer within him. Thus far, Lang constantly shifts the source of the whistle from on-screen to off-screen; such manipulation of the sound source sheds light on the unlikelihood to locate the specific origin of human abnormality in a modern milieu. In a scene when Beckert stands on the street and looks into a shop-window, the sequence is accompanied with no diegetic sound. All what the audience can see is that Beckert dramatically changes his facial expression when he sees a little girl in the reflection of the shop-window. As the girl walks away, the camera moves out of the shop to the street and captures Beckert staring in the direction that the girl is walking. The audience then hears the diegetic sound of the street traffic, and Beckert's whistle simultaneously joins in as he starts following the girl and walks out of the frame. In the next medium-long shot, the camera tracks the little girl as she walks on the street. The whistle continues in the background; however, Beckert no longer appears on-screen in this tracking shot. While the audience has been led to believe that the whistle comes from Beckert by the previous shot; Lang purposefully leaves the established sound source off-screen in the following shot, which leads the audience to question whether Beckert himself is the source of his abnormality, or if the city is that with which has fostered his brutal crimes.

        Lang further manipulates sound to create off-screen space that contrasts the on-screen image in order to depict another form of human abnormality: the revolt against the political authority. The conflict between the underworld business and the police points to a divergence between the authority and the public, which is previously kept in disguise by a seemingly stable social order. However, as Beckert's crimes disturb the social order and alarm the police, they immediately assume that the criminal must be someone from the underworld, and decide to break the ostensible peace and raid their gathering spots. One night, the police secretly surround one of the underworld's gathering place; in which the entire process is accompanied with no sound. The camera soon moves downstairs into the basement where people in the underworld business gather. As a woman shouts out that the police is here, everyone begins rushing towards the exit to leave the basement. In a medium shot, the camera awaits at the top of the stairs and looks slightly down as everyone starts running towards the camera. Among the frenzied noises, the audience first clearly hears a woman's scream as the policemen yell back at her; yet the entire action takes place upstairs in off-screen space while the shot remains still, featuring the panicking crowds. Soon, the police enter from the lower frame and gradually push the crowds back into the basement for investigation. The image on-screen contrasts the actions taken place in off-screen space; such contrast allows the audience to look beyond the images shown on-screen and picture the entire city, where its underlying instability and human abnormality are close to outbreak due to the police's disruption of a public order that does not solve social problems, but merely hides them unseen.

        Throughout the film, Long constructs several montage sequences which implicitly build cause-and-effect relationships between the modern city and human abnormality. In the beginning of the film, when Elsie's mother becomes worried about Elsie for having not returned home, a medium shot shows Elsie's mother walking towards the window and looking out. When she begins calling out “Elsie”, the image cuts to an aisle shot of the stairwell in the Mietskaserne. As the mother's cry echoes down the stairs, the audience then follows the camera to an empty space where people in the neighbourhood hang their laundry; Elsie is still absent on-screen. The sequence continues as it cuts to a close-up on the lunch table, where Elsie's seat remains empty. The grieving howl of the mother has now ended, yet the sequence did not until the audience are shown with two more shots: Elsie's ball rolling on the grass, and the ballon that the criminal Beckerd bought for Elsie entangled in the electric wires on the city street. In this sequence, Lang juxtaposes the mother's continuous calling for Elsie with discontinuity editing of on-screen images. The audience follows the mother as she searches for Elsie in all public spaces in the city where Elsie can possibly be; yet Elsie's ball and ballon at the end of the sequence tell audience that Elsie must have already been slaughtered by the murderer Beckerd. In this sequence, Lang associates the befalling of Elsie's tragic death with the city itself: the development of the modern metropolis not only enlarges the public space, but also catalyses crime and threat among the citizens.

        In another scene when the minister condemns the police chief on the phone for the police department's incompetence in finding the killer, Lang edits a flashback as the chief explains their difficulty. The editing of this flashback again connotes the unforeseen detriments of a city in modernity. When the chief tells the minister about a white paper bag that they found behind the hedge, a close-up on the paper bag gives the audience a clue that it is a candy wrapper, and the store's name was on the wrapper. Then, the image cuts to a close-up of a map of the city, in which circles and circles are drawn with a pair of compasses in increasing radius. While the search widens, the police interrogates owners of candy stores all over the city. However, all owners shake their heads and cannot remember who had bought the candy for little Elsie. As population increases, the city provides perpetrators the opportunity to disguise their abnormality and let it grow unchecked. The editing of this sequence connects the failure to identify the abnormal with the city itself.

        Lang further implies a cause-and-effect relationship between the city and another form of human abnormality, namely, the public and the institutional authority's revolt against each other. As both the leads of the underworld and the chiefs of the political institutions gather for two separate meetings to discuss their objectives on the case of Beckert, Lang uses cross-cutting to juxtapose both meetings. The heads of the underworld complain about the consistent police raids' harm to their business and decide to find the killer by themselves in order to resurrect their business. As the underworld head waves his hand, the shot cuts to the head of police's same action. The police simultaneously decides to continue their search for Beckert without the help of the public, by organizing more police raids and search among public spaces. While the underworld condemns the police for interfering the underworld's business, the police chief Lohmann also refuses to ask the public for help as he states, “Don't talk to me about the public helping, it disgusts me.” The cross-cutting technique invites the audience to contrast the underworld and the police's conflicting attitudes against each other. Such social conflict is another form of human abnormality that is against the democratic ideal of the Weimar republic.

        As the underworld collaborates with the beggars and has seized Beckerd from the building, together they leave the scene in a hurry. Lang then presents the audience with a montage sequence in which he rewinds the crimes that the underworld has just committed. The audience follows the camera into the room where both watchmen have been knocked out and tied up. Then, the sequence continues with still shots of the forcefully broken office door, the compartment's broken fences, and ends with the hole they have dug on the floor in order to make the crime scene look like a result of burglary. This montage sequence is shown with no sound, leaving the audience in contemplation of the underworld's motive and the destructions their abnormal behaviors have caused. The heads of the underworld are provoked to capture Beckerd not because that they find Beckerd's behavior immoral, but because the underworld's business is interrupted by the police's consistent raids. In turn, they decide to look for Beckerd without collaboration with the police, and purposefully commit a series of crimes in order to achieve their goal. The lack of stability in the city's social order has fostered the formation of the underworld, and the underworld's distrust with the political authority. Yet, their abnormal behaviors will lead them to their final conviction.

        The film ends with the final conviction of both the underworld and the child murderer. The audience should not forget that it is the underworld, despite their unrighteous motives, who has asked for help from the beggars and successfully seized Beckert. Nevertheless, both parties have to eventually face the catastrophic consequences of their abnormal behaviors. The first being the underworld's imprudent disruption of the public order for their own economic benefits, and the second being the brutal crimes that Beckert has committed. Throughout the film, Lang manipulates the sound effects and the editing of the sequences to point to the modern city itself as the very cause of all forms of human abnormality preeminent in it. The diegetic world in the film, which is the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, still echoes the modern milieu in which we live. However we try to trace any form of abnormality that hinders the public order, we are always led back to the society as the cause, without identifying the specific origin. Perhaps, the only way of prevention lies in the hands of the people who make up the society, with self-awareness of their behaviors, and positive objectives to make changes.
 
 
                                      Works Cited
 
Herzog, Todd. "Fritz Lang's M(1931): An Open Case." An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era Weimar Cinema. Ed. Noah Isenberg. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 291-309. Print.
 
M. Dir. Fritz Lang. Perf. Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut. Criterion Collection, 2004, DVD.
 

M就是凶手有感
一个不需要法律制裁的凶手

同样的犯罪题材的电影，这个电影风格就是不同希区柯克的画风，就像希区柯克的电影《惊魂记》，他们的电影点相同的是都是说精神病患者的行凶。

M就是凶手，他重点的在于平铺直叙的讲述这个电影，涉及人物关系之多，有犯罪团伙，警察群体，小镇市民都是一堆一堆的演员，到影片中间部分才真正出现主角就是男主人公凶手M（ps:整部电影两个多小时，除了15分钟有一处凶手的闪现）。凶手M的露脸戏份并不多，很快他被犯罪团伙分钱雇佣的卧底市井们捉住，然后就开始自述自己的行凶是无意识行为。

那个时代的电影注重的是故事，所以编剧也是个煞费苦心纯技术活。而这部电影的演员也是平起平坐，因为没有所谓主角，他涉及演员关系之复杂，人员之多，所以应该把主角分为阵营，凶手，警队，黑帮，群众。同样胖子老希在《惊魂记》中也用了同样方法，假设女小职员是主角，随着故事发展，20分钟她就遇害了。所以主角并没有不死光环，故事才是真理。

惊魂记，胖子老希重点放在角色上的多重身份的塑造上，例如一个普通的女职员成为突然变成了携款逃走罪犯，一个友善的旅店老板原来是变态的杀人凶手。（ps:胖子老希的电影总是喜欢在人物身份的多重性下功夫，例如说西北偏北的一个才华横溢的广告商人莫名其妙的突然卷入犯罪团伙的卧底，一个年轻貌美的女人又是警察那边的卧底，又是犯罪头目的一张棋牌。在例如后窗里面的一个报社摄影师因为意外腿伤，通过偷窥又意外成为了侦探。例如迷魂记里面本来一个平常的售货小姐受雇佣变成了迷惑警察的演员。）

胖子老希的人物身份的多重性设定，使得电影更加立体，富有饱和感。这就是一个没有电影特效，一切剧情靠剧本的年代，因为没有特效，导演必须在电影的故事上花费心机，才能博得观众欢心，同时又是一个没有特效的年代，更加考验摄影师现场布光和演员的表演能力。而不是像现在的电影，那些演员只要美美的，很傻很天真就够了。现在的黑白电影质感都懒得打光，就像迪斯尼的仙野踪境，后期把实景变成黑白做复古的感觉就好。

故事的核心是角色，所以角色需要丰富多重的心理塑造。角色的每个表情，每次动作都是体现他的心理层面，电影没有小说里面的心理描写，只能通过演员的表演和观众进行视觉传达。

那是一个法律制裁的年代，法律至上，但是凶手并没有受到所谓制裁。因为他行凶是在无意识的情况下进行的，他说他的行凶时，就像背后有个魔鬼告诉他这样做，然后他脑袋一热就做了，这种无意识是不受谴责的，而且要受政府保护。但是就像影片说的那样，那些受害者，甚至她们的家庭，就是这样无可奈何的承受罪犯不受制裁，他们的疼痛夹杂着更多的无奈。影片中冰冷的旁观，没有正反派的人物结局设定，没有给观众留下坏蛋必须死的正义快感，而是像一部缺少感性思维的摄像机，好像说着我就是拍摄而已。

影片的小细节应该有掌声。一部变态凶手犯罪电影，却没有一个直面血腥镜头。一个电线杆上的氢气球，一个乱草堆上的小皮球，成功地暗示了小女孩已经遇害了。道具运用的有意义，小女孩放学回家玩的小皮球，遇害现场周围的糖纸。电影渲染的氛围很到位，一群人在一个密闭的会议室，因为想找出凶手的却又无能为力的焦头烂额的情绪，利用抽香烟雪茄弥漫开来的烟雾，来表达人心惶恐。每一个设定都是有存在的意义。还有就是当行凶过程前响起的音乐，口哨的音乐代表凶手的出现，先声夺人很好的例子，每次行凶前的口哨声音也表达了凶手的玩乐性格，他不像十二宫的杀人犯般的心思细密，说明了凶手的行为是一个无计划的感性行为。

黑白两派的介入。白派就是警察，负责正面搜寻，根据凶手线索，凶手给报社寄出了一张声明，潦草的字迹显示了凶手艺术情感的不确定性，为后面的无意识犯罪做了充足的铺垫。后来机智的警察顺藤摸瓜找到了凶手的住所，找到凶手写字用的红铅笔。白派是确定凶手的。黑派，觉得这个凶手出现导致黑派干不了事业，因为大规模的警察搜罗阻碍他们的交易。所以他们也讨厌那个凶手，赶紧捉赶紧判，赶紧恢复他们的生意。所以黑派分发市井人金钱，有序安放他们在固定方位作卧底，来捉住凶手再次犯案。不过他们也有正义的一面，面对凶手的兽性行为他们加以谴责，声讨命债命还。他们也有人性的一面，居然给凶手配置一个辩护律师，然后辩护律师说凶手是精神病患者，他的行为不构成犯罪，不受到惩罚。

这是一个法制的小社会，因为有法，所以有依据，而不是通过看的不顺眼就治罪。