Landmark Works

M

Also Known As M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder

Sound Film

Citation Formats

General Reference

Film and Media Atlas. "M." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://media.interactiveatlas.org/works/m-1931-film.

APA Style

Film and Media Atlas. (n.d.). M. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://media.interactiveatlas.org/works/m-1931-film

BibTeX

@misc{filmandmediaatlas-m,
  author = {Film and Media Atlas},
  title = {M},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://media.interactiveatlas.org/works/m-1931-film},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

M is Fritz Lang's first sound film, a tense hunt for a child murderer, played by Peter Lorre in his breakthrough role, told partly through the criminal underworld's own manhunt for him alongside the police. Released in 1931, it is now widely regarded as one of the great early achievements of sound cinema, using sound, including a recurring whistled motif from Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King, as a storytelling device rather than a mere novelty of the new technology.

Facts

Release Year

1931 1

Country

Germany 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Sound on Film

As Fritz Lang's first sound film, M used a dense, non-theatrical soundtrack, including a recurring whistled leitmotif borrowed from opera to signal the killer's presence, an early and influential use of sound as a storytelling device rather than a novelty.

Source Wikipedia