Set during the Weimar Republic in Berlin, Fritz Lang’s ‘M,’ depicts investigations aimed at supposed child murderer, Hanz Beckert. Unlike typical depictions of evidence as supporting claims, the film depicts evidence as suggesting claims. We see this immediately as paranoid people restlessly accuse each other of being child murderers, because of their visual interpretations. Within the first ten minutes of the film we are shown adults arguing, almost embarrassingly, on whose recollection of what they saw is more accurate: adults yell at each other: Red! Green! Red! Green! In this way the efficacy of seeing as an objective medium to gathering evidence, and even what counts as being evidence is questioned. In this paper I will explore the question: “What constitutes evidence?” by focusing on the coalescence and manipulation of evidence through sight in ‘M’. Despite the ostensible validity a fingerprint or paperwork may hold, and the objectivity police seemingly have, police still end up gathering these pieces of evidence in such a way that they actually invalidate them. The film portrays this manipulation of data by showing how police inspection (through bare sight), creates a sense of control over how things are seen and the impending problems with controlling how things are seen. Police commissioner, Lohmann, is shown seated as a line files past him one by one as he inspects their paperwork for them to identify and thereby prove their identities. A person has no paperwork, another is inspected to have fake paperwork, and a newspaper article overrides valid paperwork. He constantly dismisses their forms of evidence as not being enough to prove their identities, and thereby brings into question the ability for such paperwork to fulfill a job such as proving identity, or simply acting as a form of evidence. Through self-inspection, Lohmann, deems their supposed “evidence” as not being evidence. By depicting inspection of paperwork in this way, the film emphasizes how much authority, inspection and thereby sight hold. ‘M’ hosts a reoccurring theme of evidence as gathered through sight, and emphasizes the problems that lay with believing sight, just as police, to be objective.
Police, who are seemingly highly objective, are shown having no problem finding an abundance of data, however they struggle to find data that will serve to help their investigations, often missing or misinterpreting leads. A policeman states: “Obviously, it is most impossible that a paper touched by so many hands, can still contain useful fingerprints.” “However we will spare no effort to compare them with our files” … “We might find something useful that approaches a solution for this problem.” This mindset of gathering any and all data in hopes of finding a connection sets the tone for how evidence is coalesced. The film shows the fingerprints in a series on paper and then a single fingerprint projected on a large screen. Much as we look at our surroundings first as whole’s and not by their parts: a car as a car, not as a collection of metal parts. This approach to inspection, where they gather a series of evidence then focus in on small details of the series largely resembles human processes’ with sight
A wide-range approach at inspection is emphasized as the film shows the physical radius they encompass on a map; meanwhile a policeman speaks to the fact that they have inspected every plot of land, bush, and forest. Yet the film makes a point to show how all this inspection is ineffective. They find a candy wrapper in a bush and, as though the candy wrapper were inherently associated with children, they spend an abundance of their power investigating candy vendors and increasing their radii by making circles with a compass on a map. Much like their eyes are widening on this map and thereby their sight over what they see is increased. By mimicking visionary processes, they became susceptible to what the candy wrapper suggested and in turn wasted a lot of their efforts. Besides evidences’ feeding on peoples sensitivity to follow leads wrongly – evidences suggestive nature is shown to lead to people looking for evidence they want to see. Thereby closing people’s scope of possible results. This point is encouraged when the inspector goes in Beckert’s home, and his inspection drives him to look at more obvious, more suggestive pieces of evidence: a table as a source of wood, a trashcan as holding things that someone may want to hide. As a result he misses the less implicit and crucial piece of evidence: the windowsill (that is only discovered as a result of circumstantial thought much later in the film). By showing how the police constantly misinterpret leads, the film builds a rhythm of constant commentary on the errant nature of sight, primarily because of the strong suggestiveness of evidence. To further highlight how sight on its own causes interpretive problems, ‘M’ shows Beckert’s maid as near-completely deaf, and thereby heavily reliant on her sight. This indicates that the reason she was able to live with Beckert and not suspect his wrongdoings is because of her relying on sight, which then implies faults vision embodies. By heavily relying on vision due deafness the maid was fully susceptible to Beckert’s appearance as a rather unthreatening character. Peter Lorre’s (Beckert’s actor), overall childlike appearance as made by his fat fingers, stubby stature, and bulging eyes more indicate a child than a predator. In this way the film shows how because of the maid’s relying on only seeing his suggestive apparent character, she faultily missed his being who the whole population in the film was looking for: a child murderer.
Comparatively, the film supports the claim that sight alone causes problematic interpretations by showing how effective pure listening is. Commissioner Lohmann is being read a list of objects found at Beckert’s place, the policeman reads off the list, and finally gets to an item: Ariston cigarettes, which triggers in Lohmann an epiphanic moment that enables him to form a connection with a past case. By showing Lohmann as successful upon purely listening to evidence, the film encourages the idea that not relying on sight reaps better results as one can interpret more effectively.
In parallel, the aforementioned police hire a graphologist (who is seemingly meant to be able to make more of their evidence due to his specialty) who dictates to a typist: “The upper-convex feature abovementioned or the speed of the stroke, open brackets, clearer in the word ‘bald.’ Underlined three times, closed brackets, do you follow me?” Here dictation is ineffective because the process is in reverse: the dictator has already interpreted the evidence by looking at it and therefore is subjective. He states: “[The letter] indicates a strong pathological sexuality in this impulsive criminal, period.” … “The uneven writing of many other letters is, by the way those letters are represented a theatrical expression that can be expressed as indolence or laziness. (cue scene of Beckert pulling skin) In all the handwriting lie features of madness that are hardly demonstrable but strongly perceptible.” The real reason the writing is static is because it was written on wood, yet the film derides specialists like this who try to make sense of data, and are so confident that they instead provide dreadfully wrong, and ineffective information. This scene further highlights two main problems with evidence for the audience to absorb: the suggestiveness of evidence, and the tendency for eyes to manipulate it.
In addition to inefficiently interpreting, the graphologist is shown wearing sunglasses, just as all the other blind people in the film do, thereby in a sense implying that his eyes will not taint the evidence. However, this creates a feigned impression of objectivity, which the film makes a point of: fake blindness, just as fake objectivity in police, lacks efficiency, perpetuates wrong information, and does not develop investigations. In a later scene a man sitting on the sidewalk wearing sunglasses and a necklace stating “Blind,” lifts his sunglasses to see a man with a young girl, he is suspicious of the man’s being with a young girl. But, in fact, his suspicions failed, and his fake-objectivity as built by his fake-blindness is shown to be wrong: the adult kisses her like she’s his daughter and she goes off to school. The film presents a connection between sight and objectivity, and how by seeing we lose objectivity and are susceptible to the suggestiveness of evidence. At last we are given a real blind man, a blind man who acts as the first form of truly objective medium that is not susceptible to evidence’s suggestive power over sight. He acts as the most reliable witness to Beckert’s company with Elsie, despite his being blind as ostensibly limiting him from being a witness at all. He hears her talking to Beckert as he whistles “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” The film goes on a series of scenes in which this leads the criminals to capture Beckert. The film’s portrayal of the blind man as the most damning piece of evidence to Beckert states how the blind mans inability to tamper with evidence through the auto-manipulating process of seeing is advantageous. The most significant piece of evidence is presented in a rather unexpected fashion, unlike police inspective efforts, without procedure, without much effort, and that was entirely circumstantial. By not seeing, he cannot impose his own biases as easily, and, in fact, by not seeing he becomes a more reliable form of evidence. The film goes well beyond its plot to make its point on the problems with seeing. German and Media Studies professor at (the world class) UC Berkeley, Anton Kaes, states in his analysis of ‘M’: ‘From a strictly legal point of view, Beckert is prosecuted for a crime for which there is no conclusive evidence. We never see him commit a crime, there are no witnesses, and we do not even see a victim.’ (Kaes, 72) The fact that we never see the actual murder, and that instead we interpret a murder from visual cues further emphasizes the film’s desire to highlight the suggestive power of evidence. The film asks us to gather evidence and creates a suggestive pathway to the murder, as opposed to blatantly showing us the murder. Elsie’s ball bounces on a poster about murder, foreboding the murderer’s proximity and interaction he will have with her. Soon after, that same ball rolls on the ground, with no one there to pick it up, a clear indication that she is no longer playing. Rather, she has disappeared. Finally, a balloon, translucent with small legs and arms and a big head and body – eerily similar to a child, floats up, away, until it gets tangled in utility pole wires. All the while Beckert whistles “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” a song about prey being in a predator’s trap. ‘M’ suggests to us Elsie’s murder, despite never directly seeing her death, the film effectively suggests to us her death by how we see the ball, how the balloon is portrayed and how the relationship between predator and prey exists. The film continues to emphasize its own suggestiveness as a piece of evidence to its point by showing how we as an audience watching the film are susceptible to suggestive cues the film presents.
As the graphologist speaks of insanity as per his interpretation of the murderer’s writing, scenes waver simultaneously between the graphologist’s words and Beckert looking at a mirror as he pulls downward on the corners of his mouth, his eyes fixate on his distorted reflection. We see him pulling on his expressionless face as we listen to the specialist comment on his insanity. The film influences the viewers interpretation by controlling what we see (Beckert distorting his face) with what we hear (commentary on insanity).
Yet again we are exposed to the aforementioned balloon. This time at the very end of the film, it stares at the audience empathetically, being held by the blind balloon seller who provided damning evidence about Beckert to begin with. The child-like appearance, white face, and floating body are now tied down, held by the blind man, as though he holds the spirit of a dead child to damn he who killed said child. Meanwhile, parents scream in agony in response to Beckert’s insanity plea, yet the film chooses not to show the parents screaming at Beckert or his lawyer. Rather, their faces are shown up close. Every detail of their face spears at the audience just as their agonizing voices do. ‘M,’ blatantly controls what the audience sees and hears in order to evoke empathy, while questioning our ability to remain objective, and to thereby be undeceived.
‘M,’ creates a strong case against people’s ability to succumb the suggestiveness of evidence. The film, in its suggestive nature, suggests an open-ended question asking the audience if it is for or against Beckert’s insanity plea, by not providing us with a verdict. However it is neither for nor against, rather the suggestive nature itself causes this question to come up. The film shows evidence beyond it’s generally understood function to support, and toward its ability to imply certain elements. However, because of how the film portrays the strong suggestive power of evidence, and the facility to manipulate evidence, purposely or not, the film suggests that it is important to remain skeptical of the validity of evidence. What matters most is not the evidence itself, but the way in which it is presented. When evidence is presented it is not so much evidence alone that is presented, but what the presenter wants to be seen. Thereby manipulation of evidence is shown to be more significant than evidence itself due to how the suggestiveness of evidence is ultimately what sways judgments. In this way, we are led to believe that what constitutes evidence is in fact the manipulation of evidence, it’s protean nature: in manipulating and being manipulated by those who see it.