M.

Ahh, irony at its best. This movie was so perfect. Aside from it being visibly ironic, the end was so unpredictable. It was sort of maddening and shocking, and I must say, I did love that. There were so many brutally ironic elements in M, and I'd like that to be the prime focus of this entry. So much was revealed through the irony about the movie's characters and also Germany at the time. I recall this one scene where Peter Lorre has chalk on his back and the little girl tells him he's a mess. First of all, shouldn't she feel worried that some random man has been stalking her (for lack of a better word), I suppose not. This small girl is treating the murderer like a child. The way she cleans him and even hands him his knife back are all very naive, but at the same time rather ironically mature. Peter Lorre is trying to take advantage of the children but they are being a matronly figure to his disheveled self. Another blatantly ironic element is the way the criminals are taking the police's position as law enforcers. They obviously have their own motives, but it's so irresistibly ironic the way they search for him and catch him and even have some twisted form of a trial. Their proceedings are parallel to that of the polices, but perhaps even a bit more acceptable. (And here lies my theory of the police being more like brutes than enforcers at that time and this is therefore a reflection of German society at the time, but this is merely a prediction of mine). At the end of the trial the man who is trying to do good by defending this clinically insane child murderer gets his way by pulling a gun out on the crowd. It's ironic because you'd perhaps expect him to be a pushover of sorts, or at least a gentle man who would resist such action. I really really enjoyed this movie. I wouldn't venture to say that it was well made or even that interesting, but M had this element of being completely insusceptible. The end was really superior to many I've seen. It was almost sort of corny, but I didn't expect that outcome at all, and I loved that.