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The director offered, on various occasions, different versions of the inspiration for "M." He sometimes denied that a certain real-life case had shaped or influenced him; other times he admitted that, why, of course -- that very case had not only influenced the scenario but dictated some of the storyline's defining moments.
Lang and Thea von Harbou had begun the script with the vague intention of focusing on an antisocial villain, a "writer of poison letters." It is conceivable that the setting of the story, initially, was Vienna, although the actual setting of the finished script would be obscured -- so that the events could be taking place anywhere. A German would recognize it distinctly as Berlin, but like "Dr. Mabuse", the film of "M" would have a universality that accrued to its advantage, addressing moviegoers of every origin.
One day ("I don't know what made me do it...I said, 'Wait a moment...'") Lang was hit by a lightning-bolt idea -- as if he were once again glimpsing the Manhattan skyline for the first time, or dreaming of rocket ships in a sleeping car. The director must have been perusing the newspaper as usual when, not for the first time, his eyes fastened on recent reports of the exploits of mass killer Peter Kürten, whose dirty deeds in the Düsseldorf vicinity had led the press to dub him the Monster of Düsseldorf.
Kürten's name resounded throughout Germany in 1930. Lurid daily headlines catalogued Kürten's crimes, offered interviews with eyewitnesses, trumpeted new theories from police. The story developed dramatically, leading to his arrest that May. Though Kürten killed both adults and children, one of his final victims would figure into "M"; in newspaper articles, this victim was shown to be an eight-year-old girl, who was slain behind a church, her body covered with knife wounds, doused with petrol and burned.
One of the first times Lang formally reminisced about the genesis of "M" was in response to a questionnaire, sent to him by a Princeton University scholar, which he filled out in March of 1948. Lang admitted that although Germany was suffering a wave of "unconnected sex crimes and mass murders" around this time, the Monster of Düsseldorf was the criminal who most grabbed his attention while he was developing the script. (Thea von Harbou, interestingly, goes unmentioned in this account.)
Lang remembered noticing a remarkable item in the Berliner Tageblatt. This particular report described how the underworld organization of Düsseldorf, upset that their "legitimate" criminal activities had been disrupted because of the intensive police investigations, had taken it upon themselves to help stalk and arrest the killer. A beggars' organization had assisted the underworld group.
This twist was not all that unique, however; it had manifested itself on the stage in Brecht and Kurt Weill's 1928 "Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera)", which went on to be filmed all but contemporaneously with "M" by G. W. Pabst, for producer Seymour Nebenzahl and Nero-Film. Members of the Düsseldorf underworld may not have attended Brecht and Weill's celebrated ballad-opera; Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou most certainly did.
The "M" script was revised and completed with Peter Kürten in mind. The original poison-pen concept was salvaged and survives in the film in diminished form, with Hans Beckert, the killer, writing anonymous boasting letters to the press and police. Not only did Lang and von Harbou draw on the rash of daily newspaper articles about Kürten, but the director maintained regular contact with the police headquarters on Alexanderplatz and was permitted access "to the communications and secret publications" of Berlin's force -- which enabled him "to document exactly the police procedure used to capture such a criminal." Von Harbou's secretary Hilde Guttman confirmed that the director and his wife not only visited Alexanderplatz but traveled to London, where they consulted and compared notes with Scotland Yard. They also toured prisons and lunatic asylums to observe and interview sex offenders.
The news items, the underworld angle, the access to police files, the procedural authenticity -- all this contributed to the script's transformation into "a synthesis of facts," in Lang's words. For it was growing increasingly important to Fritz Lang that his scripts were fundamentally factual and verified by eyewitness testimony, police documents, and newspaper clippings; in his eyes, it gave his work a claim to respectability. (How ironic, then, that in the case of some of his best films, such as "M", the factual underpinnings do not matter -- indeed, seem almost irrelevant -- to an appreciation of the film.)
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. Copyright © 1997 by Patrick McGilligan.
