El maldito

If the mastodons over at the House Un-American Activities Committee hadn't enough reason to blacklist Joseph Losey than his remake of Fritz Lang's classic M gave it to them. This is Losey's best broadside against the witch hunts and the blind panic the gripped vast sections of the American public ferreting out Communists and their fellow travelers.

There's a serial killer of little girls operating in a small American city and it's got the police baffled. With conditions as they are the police turning up the heat, organized crime types can't operate so the local Don played by Martin Gabel starts his own manhunt. He can move into places local police chief Howard DaSilva can't.

The killer is mild mannered David Wayne a truly pitiable sort when unmasked. His devolution of defenses is something to see.

Good ensemble cast worked with the leads. A good remake of a classic.

The poster for director Joseph Losey's M promises to deliver "the greatest motion picture you've ever seen!". This, of course, isn't true; in fact, it isn't even the great motion picture entitled M you'll ever see. The original movie of the same title, directed by Fritz Lang, is possibly one of the finest pieces of cinema ever made, and one that reflected the political turmoil of Germany at the time as the Weimar Republic start to collapse under the increasing power of the Nazis. Douglas Sirk, a German working in Hollywood, was first approached to helm the remake, but wanted to scrap the original premise but keep the focus on a notorious child-killer. This could not happen, as such a grisly topic was banned in Hollywood, but would be allowed if it was a remake of a classic. Sirk held his ground, and so M was handed to Losey instead.

Martin W. Harrow (David Wayne) is a reclusive serial killer who has already gained notoriety throughout the city after a few dead bodies were found, minus their shoes. Inspector Carney (Howard Da Silva) feels the pressure of expectation, resorting to desperate measures by fleecing the regulars at a known criminal hangout in the hope of stumbling upon a clue or lead, as the city's residents are in high- paranoia mode, reporting anyone acting remotely suspicious or seen walking with a child. One old man is hauled in after helping a young girl take her skates off after a fall. Syndicate boss Charlie Marshall (Martin Gabel), seeking an opportunity to divert the attention away from his own criminal activities, rounds up his gang of crooks and brings in drunken lawyer Dan Langley (Luther Adler) in the hope of tracking down the murderer himself.

Any American remakes of foreign masterpieces will always be looked upon with some degree of disdain, and I must admit that I went into M expecting a pointless re-hash of what came before. However, under the disguise of a film noir, Losey's M is a damn good movie, with the panic-stricken city eager to turn over their neighbour in the hope of sleeping easy at night easily comparable with Joseph McCarthy's Communist witch-hunts terrorising Hollywood at the time, which saw industry giants pressured into naming names and exiling their co-workers onto the Blacklist. As Harrow, Wayne is subtly effective, sweet-talking his victims and luring them with his whistle. More focus is given to his character than in Lang's film, and Wayne manages to invite more sympathy than Peter Lorre's incarnation as he is eventually hauled in front of a public jury. It certainly doesn't have the dramatic weight or technical wizardry of the 1931 version, but Losey's effort stands out as one of the most gripping noirs of its era.

This is a 1951 remake starring David Wayne as the child killer that was so brilliantly portrayed by Peter Lorre in the original 1931 film.

The remake is well made, but mostly because of Wayne's basically non-verbal performance and the fact that producer Seymour Nebenzal was only allowed to make it if it almost exactly mirrored the original. That was due to Production Code concern that the movie not include child molestation as part of the plot. In fact, before he hired director Joseph Losey, he asked fellow German ex-pat Douglas Sirk to direct, but Sirk turned the project down because he wanted to do a rewrite. (Losey also wanted to rewrite it, but for the same reasons, couldn't.)

You see the same camera work, the child is approached by a man at a candy machine, but he is only seen in the mirror and from the legs down (very menacing); the killer buys balloons for the girls he kills to pacify them and the balloon is seen floating above the power lines once the child has been killed; a child's ball that she was bouncing a moment before her death comes rolling into the frame and we know, again, a child has been killed.

The kangaroo court held by the mobsters is almost identical to the original as is the search for the killer in a giant commercial building. The motives are the same; the mob wants to get the child killer because he offends even their criminal senses and because they want good publicity from the police, press and public.

There is one very American element to the remake, however, and that's the use of psychotherapy/psychology that was sweeping the nation around this time (and which continues today). Wayne gives a speech explaining his domineering mother's hatred toward the "evil of men, just men" and his need to be punished not only for his deeds but because he is, simply that, a man.

I thought I would hate this remake but I didn't. Although not as startling and striking as the original, there is still a place for this remake I think in the catalog of American cinema. There are very good character actors as well, including Raymond Burr as a gravel-voiced mob enforcer, Howard Da Silva as a chain-smoking homicide detective, Martin Gabel as the crime boss trying to get all the mileage he can out of catching the killer and Luther Adler as an alcoholic criminal attorney who puts up a defense for Wayne and maybe himself simultaneously.

There is also the cinematography of '50s Los Angeles by Ernest Laszlo that serves as another character in the film--it appears to have been filmed on location and it is eye-opening to see this portrait of the City of Angels. Not looking very angelic.

I would have to say I liked this "M" but it is not as good as the original; maybe it isn't trying to be. Like their German roots, the film and the filmmakers seem to be searching for something uniquely American.

I commemorated the 25th anniversary from the death of director Joseph Losey (which occurred on 22nd June 1984) by watching his two best (and, ironically, rarest) Hollywood movies, both noirs made in 1951 – THE PROWLER and M. Fritz Lang's original 1931 version of the latter is not only generally considered to be its director's masterpiece but, on a personal note, is also included in my all-time Top 20 movies. Therefore, I had always been particularly interested in seeing how Losey (another director I admire a great deal) had tackled the daunting task of remaking – and relocating to L.A. – such an iconic German movie. Boasting the original's own producer, Seymour Nebenzal, the 1951 remake has been almost impossible to see and, actually, I only managed to track down a mediocre-looking print a few months ago; even so, I am certainly grateful to have been given the opportunity to catch up with it…especially in view of the fact that Sony's long-rumored Joseph Losey box set on R1 did not materialize after all! Perhaps inevitably, the film's initial stages (the murder of little Elsie) closely resemble those of Lang's film – even down to the choice of camera set-ups: the high angle shot down an eerily desolate flight of stairs, the close-up of the vacant breakfast table, the tell-tale shots of a solitary flying balloon and a rolling ball – but Losey nevertheless manages to gradually make the film his own, culminating in a trademark hysterical finale that highlights a new character not featured in the original: Luther Adler's alcoholic attorney who is, ill-advisedly, moved to turn against his boss Martin Gabel after the baby-killer's confession. David Wayne – best-known until then for playing lightly comic roles – is quite good in his own right (especially during the aforementioned trial sequence) if, understandably, falling short of Peter Lorre's unforgettable original characterization; similarly (and effectively) cast against type, Howard Da Silva makes for a fine Chief of Police, while the sterling supporting cast includes Raymond Burr (also atypically amusing as a raspy-voiced, leading underworld thug), Steve Brodie (as a sadistic cop), Glenn Anders and Jim Backus (as the mayor)! Interestingly enough, two directors-to-be were employed in minor capacities on this film: assistant director Robert Aldrich and script supervisor Don Weis. Allegedly, Fritz Lang balked at Nebenzal's offer to direct the remake himself and never forgave Losey for daring to touch his magnum opus…he must have conveniently forgotten the fact that he had himself remade in Hollywood two Jean Renoir classics – LA CHIENNE (1931) and LA BETE HUMAINE (1938) – as SCARLET STREET (1945) and HUMAN DESIRE (1954) respectively!

Occasionally gripping noir from noir's golden period. Middle-age loner Harrow (Wayne) is a serial killer of little girls. His sixth murder alarms much of LA, especially the underworld which feels extra pressure now from the cops. As a result, the various gangs organize in pursuit of the killer before he strikes again. But will the cops and gangsters catch him in time.

The movie has many fine touches, except for the final chase whose massive gangland presence without police intervention amounts to a real stretch. Where the film excels is with Harrow alone and acting out his illness. Note how he squeezes off the head of a female doll with a photo of his mother in the background, the significance of which turns up at the end. Also, his caressing of shoelaces from his victims suggests a sexual fetish. As a reader of true crime, I've learned that shoe fetishes are not that unusual-- there seems no end to human oddities. At the same time, there's the telling touch of a little girl's balloon soaring toward the heavens that implies her death at the killer's hands, along with a note of hope for something better. Oddly, actor Wayne has practically no lines until the final segment. There his monstrous nature is somewhat mitigated by a heartfelt recognition of his mother's twisted role that he was apparently too weak to overcome.

Ace director Losey makes good use of the many LA locations including the famous Bradbury building from DOA (1950) among others. And that's along with a number of noirish lighting touches. Too bad Hollywood's notorious Blacklist period sent him into exile in England during probably his most productive period.

Except for Wayne, the supporting cast is not called upon to express much emotion. Thus attention remains on the killer and the little girls he inveigles with toys and goodies. As indicated earlier, the weakest parts are the staging of the gangland mobs that appear to have buried their differences in favor of large uncontested mob action.

Despite the downside, the movie's subject matter challenged taboos of the time and still manages moments of genuine involvement.