Analysis of British Films - Movie Review Example

Information The Use of Sound As a Cinematographic Tool in M (1931) “Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen.” (The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy) (Wittgenstein 1922, p. 184) Germany in the 1930s was not exactly a picture of social harmony and familial bliss. After the First World War, Germany’s economy came to a staggering halt, with tremendous loss of life and means of survival, due to loss of trade, industry and a skilled work force. As the German society struggled to come back up on its feet, the seeds of despair, discontent and suspicion were already sown. People, by and large, became closed and withdrawn and the pro-Nazi force further fluffed up the isolation and the hatred by floating the ideology of an invincible, remorseless Aryan race. As this attitude seeped into the collective subconscious, the basic unit of a society-the family- suffered, as parents became the perpetrators of hatred, fear, and tight-lipped discipline. Children growing up in these years of turbulence; the children of ‘stab in the back’ ritual; naturally grew up into adults who had neither witnessed nor experienced parental affection that tempers a child’s personality into that of a balanced and compassionate human being. Little surprise then that the German society saw a denouement of emotional virtues into diseased, unstable minds and an upsurge in crimes of a psychological nature. Adolph Hitler’s gradual rise to power also became an instrument in the flowering of a revolution that would, for a long period in history, glorify, if not eulogize, dark crimes committed by light-headed men. The arrival of dark cinema was inevitable as society changed its psychological hues from industrious to insidious. It is good to hate. To hate is strong, manly. It makes the blood flow. It makes one alert. It is necessary for keeping up the fighting instincts. To love is feebleness. It enervates. You see all the nations that talk of love as the keynote of life are weak, degenerate. Germany is the most powerful nation in the world because she hates. When you hate, you eat well, sleep well, work well, fight well. (Stuart 1920, p. 253) The feeling of hatred and antagonism is rampant through the structure of the film M, directed by Fritz Lang. Be it the every day dealings of the lumpen proletariat or the meticulous living of the law-abiding citizens; the feelings of animosity and suspicion take only a sprig of doubt in this film to come to fruition. Anton Kaes’s account of the restored version of M states: “Lang calls his film a documentary and it is one in as much as it faithfully records those deep structures of order and disorder which constitute a society in crisis.” If the maker of this German classic, Fritz Lang, was attempting to eke out a contrast between the wills and ills of a seemingly strong and well-knit society; he managed to do a remarkably memorable job. Not only did Lang, in his movie, draw out the shadows of an expressionist society but also attempted to scrabble at the under-layers of a diseased social fabric. M is not only the story of a psychopath (based on the crimes committed by a certain criminal who went by the name of Fritz Haarmann), but it is also a revolutionary attempt at the canonization of the ‘film-noir’ genre. M is labeled to be a state-of-the-art film of its times as it was the first movie which entailed intriguing story-telling with the help of sound. “A thundering gong rings out and reverberates over a dark screen for a full ten seconds. Lang, the consummate modernist, begins his film with the medium’s bare essentials: a black canvas and a single, resonating sound” (Kaes 2008, p9). The movie opens with a group of children singing a song of foreboding and the very first sound that hits the ears of the audience is that of impending doom. The ironic juxtaposition of the happy notes of a child’s voice prophesying the arrival of a menacing shadow in the form of a ‘bogeyman’ manages to illicit the desired response of fear and empathetic desperation from the audience. As a lady shouts out to the children to stop singing the song, the effect is further compounded and the image of the child-murderer begins to take material form in our minds. Once the existence of the ‘bogeyman’ is established, the movie proceeds to its first event. As the little girl Elsie walks from school to home, bouncing a ball along the way; the periodic ‘thud’ of the ball plants an impression of the ticking of time. The shadow of the child-molester, as it appears on the poster declaring a reward to his finder, is constantly hit by the ‘thud’ of the ball in the child’s hand, thus adding to the desperate futility of the situation. The ticking-of-time symbolism has been used creatively throughout the length and breadth of the film to develop pace, establish presence and create an effect of synchronized clockwork amongst the characters. The conversations between the criminal and the child , as well as other characters, therefore become subtexts as the sounds become the ‘chorus’, stitching together the fabric into a definitive shape . The masterful use of sound effect comes up in the varying tones of Elsie’s mother as she calls out her daughter’s name and the distancing of the child from her is projected by the trailing off of the mother’s voice as the camera makes cutting moves from the dining table to stair case to outside the house and away to the balloon entangled in the overhead wires. Through the first half of the film, the presence of the pedophile, Hans Beckert, played by Peter Lorre, is apparent only through the tune that he whistles whenever he embarks on his mission of taking on another victim. The tune of the song “In the Hall of the Mountain King” passively haunts the characters as well the subconscious of the audience. Even the variation of the pitch and rhythm of the whistler’s notes are a clear give away of his state of mind ranging from planned and confident to troubled and aghast. The calm and serene tone of the whistle as Beckert moves towards a new victim with a confident stride, changes to a high-pitched tune of nervous anxiety when his plan is foiled by the appearance of the child’s mother. Ironically, it is the identification of this ‘whistling tune’ by the balloon-man that leads to Beckert’s revelation, his subsequent chase by the beggar clan and his eventual captivity in an attic cell. The movie has a quick-paced narrative set perfectly well against a quick-paced story line. The passage of events in time is consistently marked by horns of moving vehicles, shuffling feet up and down the steps and the trailing off of the whistler- his presence having been made conspicuous by the ‘moving’ sound of his whistle, despite his absence on screen. An interesting piece of observation is that twice through the course of events, it is only the sound (and nothing else) made by Beckert that actually gives him away to his apprehenders; first, the whistle gives away his identity and then the tapping of the wooden board in the attic cell gives away his place of hiding. Anton Kaes observes that “Lang was fascinated by the opportunities that sound afforded for redefining the relationship between the screen and the audience” (Kaes 2008, p10). The film is replete with instances where sound has actually taken over the role of the narrator and has added a new dimension to dialogue. Lorre’s trial scene in the ‘court’ of the Mafioso Schraenker (Gustaf Gründgens), is an integrated set where much more is revealed by the sounds than the actions of the actors. The establishment of an orderly and disciplined state of affairs even in a meeting of the lawless, is followed by the accusation of the guilty. Public furor is expressed by a collective expression of anger and unforgiving hatred. The moment of intense spike comes when the criminal claims to be innocent as he is driven by an impulse and goading insanity. His emotional outburst and desperate screaming helps the audience identify his problem, yet the ‘courtroom’ public remains unforgiving. This particular scene redraws attention to the traumatized psyche of the German society during the post-war struggle, mentioned earlier in this paper. Where Beckert may represent the ‘afflicted mother’ bent upon ‘potty-training’ her infant by repeated physical abuse and ‘stab in the back’ ritual, the ‘courtroom public’ stands in for the social governance in general, which, by its unforgiving and relentless attitude further compounds the confusion in the mind of the criminal. In fact one can even find traces of a Hitler-like psychology that explains for its heinous sin as something done under the urge of a compulsive disorder. Thereafter, as the lawyer stands up to speak in defense of his client, the laughter of the courtroom public, paints a clear picture of the general impression of the state of law and order in the society. The laughter carries notes of sarcasm, distrust and vengeful paranoia leading to an absolute dismissal of the efficacy of the judiciary. The film ends on an open note. The criminal’s punishment is left for the audience to decide. The final words of advice by Elsie’s mother “to be more careful” comes through as a note of caution to the German society to wake up to the call of model parenting and change the nonchalant attitude towards their own children. The movie is a stoic attempt towards symbolic representation using baroque and shadow techniques as a tool of effective story-telling. The use of background noise, music and sound-effects paved the way for classics like The Bicycle Thieves, Private Detective, Dracula and Shanghai Express in the genre of cinema-noir, for their classic display of oblique expressionism. M, however, still remains the most daring and hammering attempt at artful sound-effect techniques. The sound of the blow, still resonates. Works Cited Kaes Anton, M , 2008, London, British Film Institute , 2008. Stuart Herry, Villa Elsa: A Story of German Family Life , New York , E. P. Dutton & Co., 1920. Wittgenstein Ludwig , Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus ,1922. Read More