Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke, Gustaf Gründgens
Running Time: 111 minutes
Synopsis: A German city is terrorized by an elusive assailant (Peter Lorre) who abducts and murders school-aged girls. After yet another girl is killed, Inspector Karl Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) intensifies a police crackdown on all illegal dens. The heightened enforcement disrupts the business of organized crime syndicates, and their leader Der Schränker (Gustaf Gründgens) orders his members to find and capture the murderer using a network of street beggars for surveillance. Former psychiatric patient Hans Beckert is finally identified as the prime suspect, and he is pursued by both gang members and police officers.
What Works Well: Director and co-writer Fritz Lang creates the template for follow-the-evidence police procedurals, and adds innovations in sound, camerawork, and storytelling maturity. Deploying a less-is-more approach to the new sound technology, Lang prioritizes the mood and details of a city gripped by fear. The thematic strength of pathological urges conflicting with crime as a cold business is propelled by the irony of organized syndicates working in common cause with the police to rid the city of an unwelcome scourge. Several epic scenes leave a deep impression, including a girl's missing ball, a balloon against power lines, the dueling meetings of gangsters and police officers developing strategies for catching a killer, and a roomful of criminals acting as vengeful jurors. Peter Lorre's provocative appeal for mercy is a revelatory look into a killer's tortured psychology.
What Does Not Work As Well: Several scenes slip into minutiae, unnecessarily extending the running time.
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