Fritz Lang's M

We're all fun, good foot. Yeah, awesome. Good start. There you go.

Hey, you're always this. My spooky friend Alex. I'm feeling spooky. How about you?

I'm feeling that. You're awesome. This is my favourite time of year. to get close to children and give them candy without fear of a media over brisal.

That's right. As long as we're dressing out that which candy is mine. That's right. What are you dressing up as?

This year I'm going as the scariest thing imaginable. A conservative, a host of a rival podcast. Oh, yeah. He's flak-till.

JKJK, he's not a rival podcast. That's true, he's not. That's a friend podcast. He's a friend.

I'm just gonna partially examine my brain. No, that's good. How about you? Yeah, what do you want to do?

What do you want to do? What's going on as the main actor for me? I look at him. Last year, Claire bought me a onesie.

That was pizza. I was just wondering for that. Are you wearing that again? I lost a little bit of weight.

So I'll look as hilarious. I don't know. I don't really get into Halloween that much. I'm going as leftover pizza.

I just take the kids around. I really don't care. Okay. That was for you, Alex.

Some people are eating. Yeah, chicken costume everywhere. For the past few years, I was just gonna... My goal is to wear it every year until I'm like 80.

And it's just like... That's a fabulous costume. I remember that. It's a good one.

Yeah, yeah. For other events too, right? Yeah, when I'm trying to hook up with Greg. Yes.

But though that only chases me around, he goes... I get out of the coop, little chickadee. That's where Greg, this is your co-host Alex Priu. That's what they all are.

We're gonna talk about a very sad movie today. Right. The Amets Scary Movie. Yep.

And it's scary to Greg. Because it involves killing children. And the red one. And Greg is a child.

That's true. During the... When this movie was set actually. 1931?

That's right. That's right. I love this movie. I've taught it multiple times.

It's four, M. Now if you wanna pause the show here, you can Google M streaming and find it on Internet Archive and just stream it for free. Or just keep listening and get a taste of it. And then when you go and watch it, your experience will be enriched.

Right? Sorry. We're not going to talk about the conclusion? No, we'll talk about the whole thing.

I mean, yeah, we'll ruin it. I mean, it's an interesting point. You inadvertently raise, I say inadvertently, because it's interesting. But it's an interesting point because it's a murder mystery, but you know who has done it.

It's like not a who-done-it. It's a how they find it. Or whatever. Which is like a lumbo.

What's that? It is like a lumbo. Yes. Do you always know?

I haven't seen clumbo. Oh, you always know we didn't go. Oh, you don't know. Yeah.

It's like a lot of gold. So this is 31 and boy, when you watch this film, aside from, you know, the quality of the film tape, yeah, I think it could have been released that that acting, the facial expressions, again, so much, so many movies, this is some tri-op observation, but movies these days rely entirely too much on the relatives of modern technology, right? Explosions or like quick cuts and things like this. And this is Chris Lang, the director takes his time and the actors with their facial expressions and of course the accompanying classical music that we'll get into, it makes this film a masterpiece.

And Alex, you brought this to my attention years ago when you started really getting into film and you have taught this in the classroom, right? Yeah, a few times. Yeah. I used to do a philosophy in film class.

I've also taught it alongside Plato's Republic at times because I think yeah, I think there's an interesting we'll get into this, I'm sure, but there's an interesting relationship between reason, anger, spirit, andness and desire that reminds me a lot of the tripartite soul before the Republic. And though it's not one for one thing, I think there's some interesting. So I like to work movies into my classes. So students have the illusion of enjoying themselves sometimes.

Yeah. But you know, folks at home, can you just, Alex, maybe tell us a little bit about who Fritz Long was, what were some of those other movies? Where's he from? Anything else that you think folks would want to know?

Sure. He's a dirty damn crowd. He's probably most famous for this movie and for a metropolis. Would you say David?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. But he did a number of movies he did. Now, metropolis is silent, right?

Silent. Yeah. Okay. This is not this is not this is first.

I wasn't just hearing voices, right? Like I was actually was there was dialogue and good. All right. Though it is I forget.

I once read a statistic of things like 40% silence though, like there's large chunks where it's quiet, even during parts that you would think are noisy, like cops are conducting a raid and everything's quiet until somebody notices the cops are coming into the hideout kind of area, the sneaky's here, whatever. So, yeah, he did a number of really fantastic silent films. He did a version of Dini Belungen. That's really, really good.

Really? Yeah. He has visual abilities because of his style. I couldn't see your logo.

He had a monocle. Yeah. But his capabilities with sort of visual stylization. Oh, I see.

But I'm trying to remember there's another film I'm forgetting. He came to America, right? He did cover America during World War II, I believe, right? Yeah.

But he, yeah, he has a Dr. Mabusa trilogy. I think the first one and then the other are not. Scarlet Street is also quite good.

I enjoyed that. I remember when I watched it. He has a good, but yeah, there's a two part version of Dini Belungen. He also did, if I'm not, is he the one who did?

Yeah, the woman in the moon. He did the one that's flying off to the moon that that that's smashing pumpkin music is based off. But it's a really cool movie. But these are his silent films are very stylized.

And then as he started doing sound films, he pulls back, but he still uses his copious abilities. And he wrote a lot with his wife on Harbo, I think it is. He came in Aussie. She became an Aussie?

That's right. They have on Harbo. Anyways, I like it. I mean, he's got a masterpiece of cinema.

Masterpiece. What was your question? David, what are you writing down your Alexa? I used to be in a Nazi.

I think you start taking notes. Let's, yeah. How did you do this in the show? One of the things that I write down on is we record as the number of times that you guys installed me and on the left hand side and on the right hand side, I plan the way that I'm going to get my revenge.

The way I was the compliments of an Aussie thing for over couplets. Yeah. Okay. Back to my notepad.

So how about the plot? I'll do the plot. I'll do it very similarly. And then you guys can fill in the blanks.

The movie opens. There's a sign. It's in German, so I don't know what it said. But there's some notice that a child has been killed.

It then pans to the apartment of a working class woman who is, and we know she's working class because she's washing the dishes and cooking soup and washing the clothes. She's waiting for her child to return from school. The other children return from school. Her child is not with them.

And then we sort of see the shadow of the silhouette, I suppose, of the murder. He gets a balloon. He kidnaps the girl. And then entirely off camera, we're led to understand that he's murdered her.

A manhunt sort of becomes underway. They try to find the killer. And the way that the police or the authorities try to find the killer is they just start harassing all the criminals. Now, the criminals don't understand themselves to be child rapists and murderers.

They understand themselves to be just trying to sell a hooch on the side or gamblers or prostitution, those kinds of crimes. Consenting adult kinds of crimes like theft and robbery and that kind of thing. It's just plain old murder between adults, right? Like just good time, Charlie's.

And they have no truck for this kind of killing of children and raping of children. They have no truck for that killing and raping children. And so they decide that they're going to get together and find this guy because he's bad for business. And they assume he's a guy, by the way, which I find defensive as a guy.

But they're going to go after him. And then there's this scene where the police are also trying to figure out how to figure out how to figure out the guy. And the scene's actually run concurrently. Like they go from the cops to the criminals, from cops to the criminals, figuring out a plan they're going to actually define the guy.

Just going to the chase, the criminals actually find the guy. They then decide to put him on trial. They form a kind of jury. There's a prosecutor and a defender.

It's clear that he's lost the case. At that point, right? He's like, we're doing some spoiler alerts here. Right?

As our murderer is about to lose the case, the authorities are tipped off the authorities come in and they stop the trial from concluding it from excusing me. And then he then goes on trial before the actual authorities. I see one important part while he's on trial, he gives this this really impressive model. I got to admit, like the movie I thought was good.

It's pretty good. It's kind of interesting. It's kind of compelling. It's impressive.

But then when he gives this model out at the end about his guilt, that's when I thought, oh, wow, this is really, really impressive movie. It's mostly about his compulsions and how he was incapable of controlling himself. And then the criminals see themselves as somehow different. He's not like them.

And he says he's not like them. They could get a real job where he can't get these compulsions that they don't have. I think that's just a summary. Yeah.

In prison, you read that this is kind of how it plays out too. So rapists and pedophiles, there's a pecking order within prison. He's doing life sentences for butchering a bunch of people. And then the pedophile or rapist comes on the the sub lock and they're immediately stopped to the...

So there is that. Alex, be careful. There is that interpretation that the murderer was just simply bad for business. So he's bringing heat on the whole enterprise right now.

There are detectives crawling around. And then there's just a revulsion of the crime because everybody can ask kids. I thought it was all the form. I didn't get into tech much of the latter.

I mean, the weird thing is in the trial. I don't know how much you want to get into things about the bad, but there's this trial that the criminals put on when they finally catch. Does he even name by the way, or criminal? He does, doesn't he?

Yeah, it's Hans. I forget the last name. But when they're going because they don't know who he is by going through all the insane people who have been released in the area. But it's Hans, I'm forgetting his last name now.

So is it the B.I. Becker? Maybe. That sounds right.

But there are women in the jury, a large number of women, and they seem to be more associated with victims than the criminal elements. So it's curious how the women get there. I don't quite understand it. And so I did go through the whole trial process of setting up an involved King of Rookord with a riot-rich-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r rather than just lynching him.

Yeah. I took that to be a condemnation of the actual authorities. I think that's in part, I mean, they're an obviously immoral element that also has some kind of inchoate morality. And they feel the compulsion.

I think to go back to the Republicans, you're the band of thieves argument, right? If you're going to pull off any kind of enterprise, you need to really be just and work altogether. Now, it's funny when Guy gets left behind, and then he ends up snitching because he thinks he's in trouble as an accessory to murder. But they do need to work in concert and they work so well together.

They have a leader and it needs to be a clear order of rank and all of that. And so there seems to be some sort of inculity. And I wonder whether the criminals feel on some level obliged to hold a trial, because otherwise they're owned, if they just go on murdering people, that they just suddenly deem I've gone beyond the pale. My favorite point, the trial is when the prosecutor is like, this is the defender was like, excuse me, the prosecutor is also on, he's currently wanted for three murders.

That's not what we do with this case. Yeah. You have to on some level. And so they have to, I think that's great.

That shows that on some level, they have to, they need standards, otherwise their whole organization, because there is like a code, they don't talk, right? They try to keep everything in order when they say at one point, when people are in prison, they help to take care of their wives and children, right? Now, obviously part of that is to make sure that the person doesn't rat, but that just goes to show that some kind of ethos is necessary. Whereas this murderer is completely solitary, his impulses are so unpredictable, there are no even to himself and they haunt him too, much as they haunt the whole city so that even to the perpetrator, there is this sort of inscrutable element that's far from ethos, it's completely sort of spontaneous, right?

And I'm pretty tall and I know it's character. Let's backtrack a little bit to the search for the criminal. Although, as mentioned earlier, it's like Colombo. I guess where, you know, you don't know how they'll find him.

I thought these were some of the most interesting moments where, for instance, they're examining his letter and in the letter, he's like, look at how erratic this person is. Oh, the guy that thinks he can, yeah, that's a real thing that they still think they can do, right? Determine your personality on the basis of handwriting? Yeah, it's like physiognomy of the handers.

But they blow it up huge. They blow up his finger pen massively. They're looking at every detail. So look how scientific we're being in searching for this guy.

And it turns out the reason is handwriting is like that is because he's writing on a window sill with like old wood grain grooves. So what looks like a hand jittering or something is just like, it's perfectly natural. He's writing perfectly comfortably. It doesn't matter.

But it shows how when you're really in the presence of like an unpredictable evil, you're going to look anywhere and look for any kind of media that you can and completely missing. In fact, you'll have a fact in front of you that proves out that they find him as a result of that because they're looking for that kind of surface. And when they find that, they're able to finally sort of get him but they completely miss. But of course, the criminals find him first and they don't use science at all.

They use that tried and tested method of hiring some hobos. Usually, when I hire hobos, it's for fighting their fucking butt. Right. I believe that I would be Halloween.

I'm a gentleman sir. I take my hobos out to dinner. We got a nice little dog in a anyways. But this is even it's interesting.

I think there's something really smart going on with that that goes back to the beginning. Like remember, the girls are singing that song at the beginning about like a murderer. And then the woman says, stop it. Stop it.

Stop it. Yeah. Don't say this. And then she goes away and then they just start singing again.

And as the woman is calling out for her daughter, Elsie Beckman, she's screaming and is showing all these empty but kind of secretive places like addicts and things like that, where her voice echoes, but you don't see and you have no idea where she is as the girl's walking home. Her mother's preparing her some food. And so she's caring for her against hunger. And as she's walking home also, please, now it's across.

So we're good at handling predictable evils, but unpredictable labels that occur in secretive places. You don't know, we're not good at predicting the criminal underworld understands the evils that are being looked out for and knows how to exploit the gaps in that. And so I think they end up naturally finding them because they understand better how evil hides than the cops do, which have a very good grasp. But obviously, as far as criminals succeed, they can have a complete grasp.

So what do you think the commentary is there that a certain criminals need? It's like you need the criminal element. If you're going to live in a world that has evil within it, you paradoxically need the criminal element to suss out that evil at the same time. It just reminds me that the FBI, all of our intelligence agencies will frequently offer plea deals to criminals for very its reasons and not just turning states evidence.

They also use them. They will go to serial killers. There are these scenes at Hannibal Lecter, if you guys have seen those films with the caskins, we can't recall which one I didn't actually all of them, he has the FBI investigator and she's like, oh, he, Hannibal, can you look over the notes of this case file? I can't get into the criminal's mind.

And he tries to make some deal. It reminds me a little bit of that. Yeah, I mean, Hannibal is so weird because he's like this brilliant genius, who is so cultured and everything. And then he eats people's brains and stuff.

It's so strange. Very strange. Whereas this guy is just completely deviant, right? Has no redeeming qualities.

Yeah. I know you were saying that the cops follow the pseudoscientific method to follow him, the concentric circles. But one of the authorities does say, cases like this, we may never find it. Usually the only way we do find is if this person makes a mistake.

Well, right? So go on. Sorry. No, I was going to say is Frick's Lane didn't make him evil enough.

He could have made and this is what happens in a lot of psychological thrillers. The audience needs needs a kind of resolution or there's some modicum of justice to serve, right? And you can't just these baby rapists and killers, toddler killers. The movie can't include with this guy walking away, right?

But there's no killer walked away. I know that was Ted Cruz's father. Oh, Jason Simpson walked away. But there are serial killers we hear about often have some weird predilection and weird tell and they get sloppy over time.

They'll go back to their same haunts the same area. But because they have these compulsions just like the character in this film, I think the most evil people that walk around who are in control of their rational faculties, they'll just do it all across America, the world. We never catch them ever. You mean like analytic philosophers?

I didn't know they were capable of anything. But yeah, I feel like you were going in the direction. Greg, your point about the area is it's interesting because there's another moment where is it Blomond, his name, the guy who's the head of the the commissioner or whatever. He he's editing a memo that's going out saying, Hey, we're looking for this person.

By the way, look for an old wood table. See if you can find it. German word, the finden or the finden is spelled the fiend it and he crosses out the E because it's but it's spelled blind fiend. It's the same pun in German as his English.

So and it's right having to do with the very way they'll catch him. And so it's funny. I think there's a I think because the evil is so inscrutable and so unpredictable and not scientifically noble in a way, that it's purely accident or chance, an accidental pun either that's done through slobbiness that points at the very detail that they should be looking for. And nobody catches him because they understand him.

They catch him because of happenstance like a blind guy sells him a balloon and the other ones. So he's he's attuned to the other things. Right. And then on top of that, there's, you know, the fact that he happens to have been institutionalized.

Like, oh, this guy must have been institutionalized before. It's like, well, that can't be necessarily true. Right. Everybody has institutionalized for the first time.

That's right. The thing that would so like, there's all these sort of. There was the one thing that had seen thing happen the same crime happened nine years ago. Is that right?

Do I remember that correctly? I feel like there was a nine times or a nine. Yeah, maybe some kind of okay. I thought there was some indication that the same crime had been committed some fixed term of time ago.

And the fact that it was committed in the same fashion led them to think this person must have been away for some time. But I could be wrong. I want to go back and look at it. And then the case and then I guess the one questions that you asked, I'll ask a general question and then the first question.

So you guys have repeatedly spoken about the the evil of the character Hans Baccert. So how is he evil? But then this gets to question that Alex and I were talking about what's the precise nature of his crime? It's left very ambiguous in the movie.

Unless I'm right that there's this idea that the crime was committed nine years ago and now it's committed again. What would have distinguished this crime from other murders of children or maybe Berlin was such a great city in 1931 that these are the only kids who got killed. So it must be the same guy. That's not what I thought I took the film to be saying.

So why is he so if you want to why is he so evil that any reference to the specific crime would also be? So it has to you. I mean, you're very interested in the movie. It has to be fairly distinctive.

What do you do? Right? Girls, you know, they can pick out that this is a sort of. Yeah.

The thing I want to say is that so he's there's a lot of knife stuff and he's very handy with the knife. So there's a lot of mutilation. The way his eyes roll in his head and like his kind of urges, it seems to be sexual in nature as well. But that that's interesting because he's only ever referred to as the child murder.

The kid divider, right? So there's a it's strange if he's mutilating and doing some sexual thing with these girls, then the funny thing is child murder is actually a euphemism, right? And there's a lot of there's a lot of interplay between like evil and justice and then rule of knowledge. And one thing that I think comes out and this goes all the way back to the the mother who says, I don't want to hear this anymore.

What justice seems to want is to get rid of injustice, to get rid of evil. And so there's a kind of repulsion implicit to it that also manifests as ignorance at evil. And to really be just might require some level sort of turning away. And this shows up when the police are discussing the crime, they're like, and then we find them, he's like, well, you know what it's like, he doesn't even want to say the word let alone describe it.

But that would arguably be your most direct clue, right, is to be painstaking and looking at these things. David knows this you were a fan of Law and Order SVU, right? We'd say that again. Where's your fan of Law and Order SVU?

Oh, yeah. Big time. Yeah, those things get disgusting, right? Because they have to go into the details.

Yeah, over time to show in it's campy. Yeah, and they try and up the obscenity of it all. I liked it because I liked Iced T's interaction with the other detective and dirty guy. I mean, it was really stupid.

But yeah, they started upping the entity and it became actually really disgusting. You may have just said this out, but one of the cops eludes to the specific nation of crime by saying, you know what we've seen the kind of thing we've seen or something like that. But they don't say it. And so there's like this knowing knob between two of the authorities.

This speaks to the, maybe we can step away from the movie for just a second. I mean, David talking about how ridiculous Law and Order SVU gets. And I never liked slasher movies, but the older I got, the more I find them just kind of ridiculous. They're not terrifying.

They're just kind of silly. And how Greek tragedies seem to understand this better and for its long, seem to understand as well that it's more terrifying. The imagination of the thing is more terrifying than the seeing of the thing where the hearing of the thing. Like not knowing what crime Hans commits, specifically with the children makes it worse because you and I are left to our imaginations.

And I know that Alex can imagine some really nasty things. And it doesn't happen on a scene like for a film that is really, really psychologically thrilling. Not a single, not a single bad thing happens on camera. I mean, is that even the kidnapping doesn't really happen on camera.

Well, the time gets caught that happens on camera. Yeah, that's a travesty. I'm not sure why, but all right. I mean, it's amazing.

Like it's remarkably civil. If I, maybe that's not the right way to put it, but like there's no violence really on people. He's caught, like they don't beat him up. Yeah.

The most disturbing. No, maybe the best way to say it. There's no violence. I think the most disturbing thing you see are the scenes of this guy's face, right?

Where there's one scene where they're like the guy's examining, like his fingerprints. On his face, the bad guy. Yeah, but just before it, there's a voice over and this guy is examining. He's like, write this down.

He's like examining his fingerprint. He's like, the arch of this part suggests like other sexual deviates. It's like you need to look at his fingerprint to tell you that, first of all. Yeah, right, right, right.

But then he's like, ah, look, I figured out. And then it cuts to as he's still speaking, Blacker is a is it Beckert? Oh, it's Hans Beckert. Yeah, he's looking into his own eyes and manipulate his face.

I think he's the first time you see the killer's face by the without mistake. I'm pretty sure that sounds right. But he's looking into his eyes and you get a sense that this guy thinks he's got is this guy completely understood looking at his fingerprint, even though nothing is saying is unknown to him, right? But this guy is looking at the mirror.

He's like, what the hell am I? Right? As he's doing it. And then there's scenes where he's like, like lurched over looking at a girl with like a weird like face and drooling.

And I mean, and then the we already talked about the actually this was before we got on, but there's this one scene when he's in his confession, he's describing the crime is I saw back in his head. And then he comes to his eyes come down and he attention releases. I mean, those are the really disturbing things. Right.

And in a way, I think to your point, because you don't actually see what he's thinking. His big, his facial expressions, big neon. Am I too much bourbon? Have physioctomy.

Physioctomy. Not just those seem, but generally, his eyes bulge out. His fingers are fat. And his fat fingers against his face are just strange.

I don't know. Like, I don't know what for its long is doing there. I mean, he's certainly not I mean, he's not buying into the notion that was so widespread at the time that you could like identify criminals by their physioctomy, was he? Like, but it's terrifying.

And he just needed a gross looking dude. So yeah, I mean, contrast that with the Hitchcock's killer. Right. Yeah.

What am I thinking of? Oh, Pete's. Yeah. Yeah.

Psycho. Psycho. Who does he look like in real life? Ted Bundy.

Yeah. Right. Who's like, who was your poster boy? Like young GOP guy?

If you know anything about his background. Well, the other thing interesting about his, the odd me is like the criminals and the policemen look interchangeable to me. Like, I had a hard time. I first, I thought it was just because it's in German, but it's in black and white.

It's a little brainy, but I'm like, I can't tell the difference between the criminals and the policemen. And then they're smoking. And I read this piece by Roger Ebert. I realized he helped me to see that like, that's actually, I think intentional and part of long, like he's making it such that you can't tell the difference between the police and the criminals to show like their physioctomy is the same.

Well-dressed, but criminal. So again, they're, I don't know what's going on with the, what's the, what's the, Alice and I were texting a little about this beforehand and talking about before him. But like, what's he saying? Is there some bigger, store?

I do think that one of the biggest things going on, Alex is probably right. Like it's about, there's a certain kind of criminal that's especially terrifying. And that's not the guy that's making money selling cards or selling booze or selling prostitutes. They're kind of criminals.

It's most terrifying as us as someone who we can't quite understand, who seems to be the victim of some kind of serious longings. His crimes are random. Like, if, you know, if one thug kills another thug, that doesn't bother so much. But somebody randomly picking up a girl off the street and raping and killing her, that seems, that makes us vulnerable because we think we're not a part of the criminal element.

But it does seem like there's other stuff going on. Like, I'll just throw out a few things. Like you mentioned that the criminals are like a band of robbers. Okay, but you likens the policeman to the criminals and sort of the police one also like a band of robbers.

So the criminals unite because they're like, all this guy's bad for business. Is that why the policemen and the authorities are also coming together? Like, that's, this is not bad for their business that, that there's now seeing the people, people are looking at them thinking they can't get things done. There's a weird Nazi vibe that I kept getting from it that I couldn't quite articulate even to myself.

Like, like the main criminal guy, he looks, he looks to me like he's from the Nazi SS, almost he wears like a leather trench coat. He always wears the collar up pops. He always wears leather gloves. So I couldn't quite figure it out because then does that make the criminal, the Jewish guy, which that can't be right.

So I don't know. There's something weird going on there as well. I mean, there's a, you're right that there's like this cascading thing and I think it's almost like with Socrates, which is the office where he's like, I'm not a office. I don't teach for pay.

It's like, you mean you got our kids for fun? Like, at least if you're making a buck, that's like relatable to ordinary people, right? Oh, yeah. Your profit-tearing.

So I think, I think the business is business line is, is fantastic because it shows that there is a kind of community here, right? Yeah. And in these kind of film noir kind of like urban sort of dark films, there is a sense that life is tough. And if you want to get ahead, you have to go outside the lines, but you're really just trying to work through the system.

There's a, there's a great film noir that would be good to do this called Asphalt Jungle, which is, yeah, it's amazing. But why are you laughing? It's a really cool thing. All right.

All right. I'm not like quoting the Alicia Keys song or whatever. So I wonder, and then, and then so there's a part where they're lining up all the tools of the trade that the, and then there's a similar scene where they're lining up all these like cigarette bus, they're going to go, unless we, it's like a right, right? That was a hilarious scene.

And then they teach the one for himself. It's like, we're going to pay the homeless very sick of us. But I think that's actually, you know, it shows that there's still a kind of economy, right? And therefore kind of cooperative thing.

I think it's a great detail, by the way, like the homeless are good at detecting child murders, because they spend all their time looking for stuff that other people throw away scraps, right? Yeah. So there's a kind of, they hold precious for us as trash. And so the things that we turn away from, they're even more attuned to like the details of the city street than the criminal clauses.

You know, one thing I can't stand though in this movie is that is the poor, decent people who really just want to befriend children. They're the real victims here, because they keep, people keep trying to beat them up and think that they're the go to their mozzarella. All you want to do is, they just want to like walk into school or be friendly or get them up a balloon or lollipop or something, you know? Yeah.

I remember you Greg, you were complaining because you're like, you know, I don't walk them all the way to school. I stop a hundred yards away. I mean, yeah, it's a big deal. What do we make of the song that the criminal thinks to himself?

We're sorry. I'm sorry. You know, whistles. I don't know.

I couldn't see some sense of cultivation with this man who says that intellectuals are perverts. Oh, that's pretty neat. It's in the hall of the mountain king by Edward or Millenau. He read notes on them.

Yeah. But have you read notes about that song? Do you know what it's about? No?

Praytail? The composition? I don't either. I mean, one thing I'll say, it's incredibly catchy.

And every time I teach it or watch it like all day on campus today, I was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it always gives me the crepes that this like killer is like is sexual or is manifest in him, so I'm always like in pursuit. And I think it's smart. Totally was composed by Greek for Ibsen's 1867 play, Peer Guint.

Yes, that's right. But I think I think it was intense this, but it's kind of hilarious to associate a child murderer with a song and have that song be incredibly catchy. So that you leave the movie theater and like, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then you're like, oh, wait, no, that's the song that means I want to rape and murder a young girl. What do you want to do?

No, the song means it. Oh, well, you guys, do you guys have any or Alex, do you know anything about what this movie meant in the history of cinema? So I was wondering if one of the reasons for, so we were just, we've been interpreting the film just on its artistic merit, but whether there are any innovations, whether the use of plot lines or subject matter, let's say, this is kind of third rail stuff that hadn't really been done before. I recall in Renoir, who's one of my favorite film directors, the French film director, he is the man, the human beast.

Now he explored, that's another interesting movie about a man with compulsive desire to murder women. And so I don't know if he was breaking any taboos here or what was going on. Well, it started the, it seems to be the first movie that started the idea of a police procedural, where it sort of goes through how they procedurally caught a criminal. So there's that and it does seem to be the first, I mean, serial movies, serial killer movie, serial killer documentary series or an house or ubiquitous.

And they sort of waxed and waned, but this does seem to be the first one that I mean, unless I really don't, I'm not a cinemaphile that Alex is but Cinephile, like that's only love China in any event. I played a dumb one Alex, stay with me. You had a file because you like feet, you kept saying that once. Yeah, that's what anyway, so I don't know why, I mean, but the destiny goes kicked off as your real killer genre as well.

And if you're a potto file, please like, please subscribe. You come up with that on the spot? We call our fans the potto files. Out of five.

Yeah. Anyways, left sure it's made. I mean, it's his first, I don't know how big this is for some, it's his first sound film and he uses quite a bit of silence of voiceovers, which are now considered kind of like a sort of a cop out. He uses the great effects because they reason he's explaining the commissioners explaining, I don't know what other official, but he's explaining what they've been doing.

And then you see them enacting it, right? And so you see the relationship between theory and practice. And so the voice it was like, what does it need to have reason or have a voice? And it's saying something while something else is happening.

Well, one way is to sort of, so there's a lot of, there's also some neat camera tricks. There's one shot where a camera goes through a window and as it gets to the glass, you can see the glass fly to the side. So it has a space to go. It's a really slick shot.

There's all sorts of little tricks that long uses. I don't know as far as it's placed in his view, I mean, I can say I've watched a ton of his films. I really like him as a filmmaker and they can be hit or miss at times. I think this is the best movie he did that I've seen.

I think he's better than Metropolis. Metropolis is really long and it's got some great things. I like this a lot better, but I'm surprised that because that's the one Metropolis has held up to be the masterpiece, right? It's pretty fantastic.

Yeah. But I think for me, the I don't know if this was groundbreaking at the time, but it was certainly interesting now with what was the common just a few short years after this film was made in Germany, where you would have the people that were ostensibly the authority figures, the people that uphold law and order in Germany themselves became the worst criminals. And then those that would stand up for justice were against the regime themselves became criminals, soon by definition of the Nazi regime. And so the alliding between a criminal and authority figure that this movie has us think about is a little bit radical.

I think it doesn't seem as radical to us today, but I wonder if it was more radical during a more law abiding time, quote unquote, in history, not law abiding where they respect for authority. What I think I'll say about it being radical or not is that there were at the time, and I think this was just common as like the press became, you know, more ubiquitous and the press obviously plays a role. There's like a people selling serial sort of stories and then there's extra editions. But as that became bigger and as urban centers after this, we talk about how the criminal goes to the press.

I'm sorry, but because the police won't publish this letter. Sorry. Yeah. That's a big that's a big plot.

Yeah, it's a huge plot. So, but I think like when you look at all that sort of stuff, I think at the time, and Fritz on went and met with one of these famous sort of child killers of the time, but there were a few that the characters apparently based on. And I think as urban centers get bigger with the industrialization, there's large poverty, there's all sorts of abuse, difficult living standards. I think there's a sort of proliferation of this sort of deviance.

And I think people were encountering more directly the sort of behaviors that would have just been like, you know, a myth or something like that. But now it was like evidence and descriptions and all this sort of stuff. So I think in a way it becomes maybe a public concern. What is this?

And Fritz, as long as providing an answer, I'm saying this is pretty unscrewed. So it ends with a kind of moral, right? What do you do with a person like this? And ends with you, we have to keep a better watch over the children, which is funny.

There's a whole movie about how you can't actually watch for this, because it's not something predictable in any sort of meaningful scientific sense. So you get a sense that he gives the lie to his own moral at the end, like he doesn't buy into it, but it's kind of moralizing maybe for the sake of of sensors or something like that. Yeah, it's satisfying the audience in a way that otherwise they just be completely devastated. Yeah, if they were to think about it for two seconds, they realize them.

Well, and it comes from the other of Elsie Beckman, the girl killed, right? Film. And so it's not from a sober reason. He stores about a morning, one other morning.

Their names are very similar, by the way. The victim is Beckman and the criminal is Beckert. I don't know if that knows of any of this stuff, but I also looked up where this wasn't Berlin, but I couldn't make any heads or tails. But it's near Castle.

I don't know if it helps. And he's lost. Yeah. Can we talk about his speech, Hans Beckert's speech, and his trial problem?

This is what I thought the climax was going to be. I thought the best part by four. That's where you climb up. He's writing on his pad again.

Greg, why you read some of it? Murder is good. I mean, I guess I previewed a little bit earlier, but I thought this was the best part of the movie. So on the one hand, Beckert realizes that he's completely the mercy of all of these criminals.

And so it's desperate and he's vulnerable. But he also strikes me as very honest. And the actor, like you said, is Peter Lorie or Lawrence. It's very impressive.

And he's just, he's basically defending himself while acknowledging that what he's doing is indefensible. He can't control himself. He hears voices in his head. He can't control himself.

He has this urge. These ghosts, they haunt him. He can't control himself. He just, when he sees these kids, he just, something pushes him to it.

And it's all the time, immer, immer, immer, always, always, it's always their question. And the only time he gets any relief from it is when he's actually doing it. And he blacks out and doesn't remember doing it, which by the way, is terrifying. And I have watched a few of these documentaries about serial killers, apparently it's not uncommon.

So for its action, long might actually have been on something here and known something that was common. But these guys kind of blackout at the moment that they're doing these things. But the most terrifying part for me is just that, I mean, in a way, as the, you know, Alex already mentioned the Republic and the Tripartite Soul, there is this way in which he's sort of echoing a version of this credit paradox. He's not doing it voluntarily.

Like, it's completely out of his control. And he chastises his fellow criminals, but saying, look, you're a thief. You're this, you're that. You could go get jobs.

Like, you don't have to be criminals. I can't help it. I'm completely under the p- it's out of my control. It's out of and it's, for me, that was a terrifying part was his sort of self realization that he's a criminal.

Like, he's like the worst kind of criminal. Like, his soul is to pray. Well, can I push back on that right? Not not the soul.

Not the soul is to pray for it. But that about the veracity of his plea, I think that what he's doing is exhibiting typical psychopathic behavior. And he's lured your country bumping ass into believing it. So we'll follow him here.

I mean, you can disagree. I'm just kidding. But he says that he cannot, he's overcome with compulsion, right? Except he lures kids away with balloons and candies.

He picks the clueded places, right? He plans meticulously. Then what does he do after he murders them? He writes notes to the police, mocking them.

They're talking that they can't catch him. And then he writes to the press, right? Those actions don't seem to me. That's very good.

But the one crime that's very good. The one crime we see him doing, or almost doing, is not planned. He's just minding his own business, looking at his own visage, admiring how supple it is. And then he sees the reflection of the girl.

And that, the scene at least seems to affirm that he's actually some under some kind of compulsion, but you're actually right about the writing. If that's true, why right about it? Why he's why taught? But at least the way that's, I mean, now I'm going to totally reverse myself, but at least the way that Long has his facial expressions, there's no audience there.

I mean, he really does seem to be overcome by some demonic force. So yeah, and it's said that he kind of blacks out and then he comes to some time later, starts and ends, you know, what did you say? I just covered that while you're away. So he's some lead with a game to knock on my door.

My dog is free on his knees, his sleeve. And she's like, you're, of course, I think there's gonna be a gun at the door or something because we're talking about creeping murder. But there's the mirror in my wife's car was open. She was like, your battery's gonna die.

I'm like, oh, that little goddamn, first of all, cars run anyways, whatever. But no, yeah, I mean, to David's point though, we don't know where it starts and ends, right? Are you writing this down? Right?

Just taking notes, just taking notes. Right. He's writing to the police right now and not finished. You'll never find me.

I think it's I think it's worth asking with David, to what degree he's genuine. I mean, there are scenes where it's pretty clear even in this week's study has kind of overcome. I have to say one thing I don't entirely buy or at least not see reflected elsewhere, where he says, I'm constantly haunted by myself. I'm constantly followed by I'm not clear if it's guilt or fear of being caught because he is certainly worried about being taught that gets him.

But I don't see much evidence that he's like tortured by his deeds and private or something like that. You know, it's, as I wonder, I wonder, I had a thought about that before he said that, David, but I think you're listening would imply he's not guilty on it. Right? And like, it seems like whistling is a sort of, you know, you wish it was a one year sort of marrying and feeling pretty light and spirit, I would say.

And usually what's the one feeling guilty? It's weird. We still win that sexual urge. All you gotta do is put your lips together and blow.

I mean, maybe if I'm like, just like that. But if it listens to home, we've already turned before we start recording that our audio recording system does not actually capture whistling. That's why we've been humming the song instead. Alex just tried to whistle.

But I think, yeah, I don't know, it's weird. I don't know. Did either of you guys feel a tingle, no, the urge to see the credit, Oh, who is by the mob? Would that have been satisfying?

It would have been satisfying for me, right? He goes around killing and reading children, right? You want to see just like we in so many movies, look at how Tarantino's Jane go. In many of his other films, I think, proceeds, right?

The Freed's Laid goes on a murderous rampage killing everybody that's harmed him and his loved ones, almost everybody in his past. And we're in Glorious Basterds. It's a group of Jewish American World War II fighters and they're just killing all the Nazis. Right?

It's great. We live through that. Or even the end of it. In a movie theater.

So it's an allegory for killing Hitler in the theater, like making him an evil monster and wanting to destroy him through that and how that it's about misunderstanding evil. That would be a great follow up film, by the way, to do this. There's another one about more reasoning, where the most moral character apparently is Brad Pitt and he's the most two-dimensional. And the most evil character is Christoph Waltz's character.