Thu 27 Jun 2024
M. Columbia, 1951. David Wayne, Howard Da Silva, Martin Gabel, Luther Adler, Steve Brodie, Raymond Burr, Glenn Anders. Director: Joseph Losey.
Speaking of re-makes, Joseph Losey’s version of M is not an easy film to see, and I’m not sure it was worth the effort. It’s from his “promising” period (before he went to Europe to make deliberately boring pictures) when he was doing movies like The Lawless, The Prowler, and other modestly stylish thrillers hinting he might someday approach the level of Sam Fuller or Joseph H. Lewis.
M gives us a bit of fine photography, a few neat directorial effects (mostly swiped from Fritz Lang’s original) and some really effective acting: David Wayne as the child-killer; Howard Da Silva as the conscientious cop on his trail; and a team of gangsters (also out to get the killer) that includes Martin Gabel, Raymond Burr, Luther Adler and the inimitable Glenn Anders at his irritating best, as a crook who thinks having a child-murderer at large may be good for business.
Unfortunately, Losey can’t seem to think his way around the censorship of the times, which dictated that Law and Order must be seen to prevail at all times, and the result is a rather muddled ending which is not exactly Losey’s fault, but which when you see how directors like John Huston and Robert Aldrich slipped subversive comments past the censors in things like Asphalt Jungle and Kiss Me Deadly, you can’t help wishing he’d been a bit more inventive.
Worse, Losey can’t get past his own tendency to preach, and things get badly bogged down while various characters stop the action to explain his moral points to the movie-going masses.

June 28th, 2024 at 2:22 am
You cannot beat Fritz Lang’s 1931 original with Peter Lorre, so why try?
June 28th, 2024 at 11:02 pm
Potential, but mostly unmet. It bogs down in its own importance which the Lang film never does.
June 29th, 2024 at 3:12 am
Who better to play a flatfoot than Howard Da Silva. If I was casting-director for any crime film in that era, he’d always be on my short-list along with Barry Fitzgerald and a (very few) others leading the pack.
June 29th, 2024 at 5:55 pm
p.s. Charlie Chaplin once said that Peter Lorre was the greatest actor he’d ever seen
June 29th, 2024 at 5:58 pm
Other than a personal opinion, so what.
June 30th, 2024 at 5:52 am
BARRY: Damn, if a Genius like Chaplin said something like that about me, I’d be tiockled plumb purple!
June 30th, 2024 at 12:29 pm
Just one ugly little man talking about another.
July 2nd, 2024 at 5:36 am
BARRY: Yeah, that’s me & Charlie