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Into the Underworld The film M, directed by Fritz Lang and written by Kaes, was created in 1931. The movie was made right after the German Expressionistic movement ended in 1926. M takes place in Berlin, Germany, where a child murderer is on the loose. The murderer, Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre), has been creating problems for the criminal underworld’s businesses, so they too, along with the police, are interested in capturing Beckert. The story develops in a desolate urban landscape which includes many dark streets, buildings, alleys, and bars. In the film M, Lang uses elements of mise-en-scene and many components of film noir to create a film with an expressionistic style. Throughout the entire film, Lang uses mise-en-scene to drive the narrative forward. In the beginning of the movie, the viewer sees a scene of children playing near their apartment buildings and singing songs about a “boogeyman”. Soon after that, Elsie Beckmann is kidnapped and without seeing her again, the audience is able to piece together the story and conclude that she was murdered. Lang uses combination of shots to suggest her death. First is Elsie’s ball coming to rest in a deserted field, then a balloon is seen floating up into power lines. During these shots, Lang also shows Elsie’s mother frantically screaming and looking for Elsie, while the sound of her voice screaming “Elsie” is repeating in the background. The actual murder is never shown, but by watching these shots in sequence, the audience assumes that she is dead. Lang wrote that this use of mise-en-scene and expressionism, “forces each individual member of the audience to create the gruesome details of the murder according to his personal imagination”.# This style tends towards expressionism because elements of the mise-en-scene were combined together to create an overall composition.
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