Shop windows, eyes of the city, is another way to show the motif of a double-ganger. Their hypnotic effect on Hans Beckert is shown in the scene 00:52:10 – 00:53:24 when we see him in a frame of the reflections on a glass and secondly the camera shows his view and his angle of reality: a girl Immediately actor’s acting explains the dramatic change in Beckert’s body language explained the condition of his mind. Sounds of the city immediately disappear and Beckert faces with his hidden nature. During this scene, the viewer does not hear anything even though the characters are staying in the street. The character is affected by voices in his head, by his illness that divides his from the surroundings and makes him lose control over his actions.
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M was the first Lang’s sound film and the director establishes the new aesthetic of interconnection between visual images and sounds. He understood that “to use sound as a dramatic element [is] absolutely necessary” (Weimar Cinema, 1919-1933. Daydreams and Nightmares, 188). Selected sounds put the viewer in a particular position of the character. Here the girl leaves a frame with mirror in which Beckert saw her, and a car horn interrupts a silence after a few seconds. The shot shows Beckert’s reflection in the shop window empathizing that the dark side of the character takes control over him, and Beckert starts whispering a theme In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt, composed by Edvard Grieg in 1875 to a play by Henrik Ibsen. Lately the whisper, Beckert’s own private soundtrack (Brockmann, 114) follows the girl although we do not see the murderer himself in the shot. However, it interrupts when the girl meets her mother that prevents another crime. Jumping arrows in the shop window symbolically points the murderer (00:54:13). These details proves that “M resonates with Weimar-era vision of the city as a place full of crime, brutality, and social anomie” (119) and “depicted the interrelationship between a lone murderer and the mass society in which he lives”
M was the first Lang’s sound film and the director establishes the new aesthetic of interconnection between visual images and sounds. He understood that “to use sound as a dramatic element [is] absolutely necessary” (Weimar Cinema, 1919-1933. Daydreams and Nightmares, 188). Selected sounds put the viewer in a particular position of the character. Here the girl leaves a frame with mirror in which Beckert saw her, and a car horn interrupts a silence after a few seconds. The shot shows Beckert’s reflection in the shop window empathizing that the dark side of the character takes control over him, and Beckert starts whispering a theme In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt, composed by Edvard Grieg in 1875 to a play by Henrik Ibsen. Lately the whisper, Beckert’s own private soundtrack (Brockmann, 114) follows the girl although we do not see the murderer himself in the shot. However, it interrupts when the girl meets her mother that prevents another crime. Jumping arrows in the shop window symbolically points the murderer (00:54:13). These details proves that “M resonates with Weimar-era vision of the city as a place full of crime, brutality, and social anomie” (119) and “depicted the interrelationship between a lone murderer and the mass society in which he lives”