Friday, December 31, 2004
M (1931)
M (1931)
What might be considered a study of vigilantism in pre-Nazi Germany, we see, first, the horror of the kintermorder;--second, the terror offered by the police;--third, the ingenuity of the underworld in non-state action against the kintermorder;--and finally, the limits to the justice system of this non-statist enterprise.
The police: "There's no privacy anymore." The police would have the license to search any yard and any building and detain any man, and they exercise as much of that license as they can find. They would have "no child [take] a step without being stopped."
The vigilantes: They're composed of an organization of criminals bent on exacting justice against one criminal whom they can brook no pity for, and, oddly enough, a union of beggars. The beggars act as the eyes and ears of the organization, and, when evidence uncovers the murderer, he is tagged (with the letter "M"), followed, and apprehended, before the onset of his trial.
The trial: by mob or by jury? The story could turn either way. "We are all law experts here," says the president of the organization, with some ambiguity.
But before we come to the trial, consider simply the fact that it was not the totalitarian means of the police state that apprehended the criminal, but private enterprise. Should this fact be attenuated in significance on reflection on the meaning of the trial with respect to similar questions about the state, it still comes as welcome and true to this viewer.
Indeed, though, no justice is perfect on this earth, and the story tells of the coming abridgement of procedural rights of the criminal. In the end, it is thanks to the government that he is granted these. The question is left seemingly unanswered whether the criminal--revealed by his previous testimony to be rather mad--is to be sentenced as a sick man or as a sane one. (The question of whether the contemporary legal doctrine determining that insanity qualfies as a defense in matters of crime, is, further, not one that this viewer has a definite opinion on. Some strength seems to be carried in the argument made by the accused's assigned defense attorney (at time of vigilante justice) that "nobody can be punished for what he cannot help"--even as it leaves other questions yet unresolved to the same effect.)
A fine film, though somewhat difficult for me to keep my attention to, perhaps given the lack of a musical score, perhaps given the German language barrier, perhaps given the style of having very nearly the apotheosis of an ensemble cast: with but the one actor (Peter Lorre, child-murderer) standing out above the dozens of other faces.
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What might be considered a study of vigilantism in pre-Nazi Germany, we see, first, the horror of the kintermorder;--second, the terror offered by the police;--third, the ingenuity of the underworld in non-state action against the kintermorder;--and finally, the limits to the justice system of this non-statist enterprise.
The police: "There's no privacy anymore." The police would have the license to search any yard and any building and detain any man, and they exercise as much of that license as they can find. They would have "no child [take] a step without being stopped."
The vigilantes: They're composed of an organization of criminals bent on exacting justice against one criminal whom they can brook no pity for, and, oddly enough, a union of beggars. The beggars act as the eyes and ears of the organization, and, when evidence uncovers the murderer, he is tagged (with the letter "M"), followed, and apprehended, before the onset of his trial.
The trial: by mob or by jury? The story could turn either way. "We are all law experts here," says the president of the organization, with some ambiguity.
But before we come to the trial, consider simply the fact that it was not the totalitarian means of the police state that apprehended the criminal, but private enterprise. Should this fact be attenuated in significance on reflection on the meaning of the trial with respect to similar questions about the state, it still comes as welcome and true to this viewer.
Indeed, though, no justice is perfect on this earth, and the story tells of the coming abridgement of procedural rights of the criminal. In the end, it is thanks to the government that he is granted these. The question is left seemingly unanswered whether the criminal--revealed by his previous testimony to be rather mad--is to be sentenced as a sick man or as a sane one. (The question of whether the contemporary legal doctrine determining that insanity qualfies as a defense in matters of crime, is, further, not one that this viewer has a definite opinion on. Some strength seems to be carried in the argument made by the accused's assigned defense attorney (at time of vigilante justice) that "nobody can be punished for what he cannot help"--even as it leaves other questions yet unresolved to the same effect.)
A fine film, though somewhat difficult for me to keep my attention to, perhaps given the lack of a musical score, perhaps given the German language barrier, perhaps given the style of having very nearly the apotheosis of an ensemble cast: with but the one actor (Peter Lorre, child-murderer) standing out above the dozens of other faces.
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