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Nov 17, 2017Nursebob rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Originally banned by the Nazis, Fritz Lang’s darkly brooding tale of a murderous pedophile, part policier, part social critique, has lost none of its bite in the intervening years and Peter Lorre gives his greatest performance as Hans Beckert, a painfully withdrawn young man compelled to kill children by his “darker half”. Lang’s gorgeous B&W photography and severe camera angles lend a sense of hyperreality to the film’s Kafkaesque industrial landscapes and a few beautifully executed tracking shots, including one that actually goes between two floors, are highly innovative for the time. But the film’s true strength lies in the way it chronicles the effect of the murders on an entire society, from the mayor’s office right down to the common pickpocket---a form of mass paranoia erupts in vigilantism and hysterical accusations while the tortured Beckert himself, clueless and mentally ill, is used to illustrate the capricious nature of mob justice. Thoroughly modern themes for such an old film.