This weekend we watched Fritz Lang’s classic crime drama ‘M’, starring Peter Lorre as a child molester/murderer. The film is still shocking. Cinematically it’s filled with technical achievements years ahead of the times. Dramatically it’s perverse, scary and ultimately moving in a quite horrific way. Click here to read more about this landmark film. If you haven’t seen it make sure to watch the Criterion restoration. Above I’ve posted two versions of the climactic breakdown of Lorre’s character when brought to justice by a group of criminals who want him murdered for his crimes without a legal proceeding to possibly interfere with justice being dispensed. Why two versions? Well, back in the day when a foreign film traveled to the U.S. (or a U.S. film traveled to foreign territories) subtitles were non-existent and a dubbed version in the countries language had to be made. (In some cases, when it was pre-determined that the movie would be exported, alternate versions in different languages would be shot simultaneously with the English version–a painfully protracted process). ‘M’ was, of course, a German film and it made its way to the States two years after it was released in Europe, in 1933. The above video is the scene in German (the English subtitles were added decades later). The below is the dubbed version in English. Lorre did his own voice–none of the other actors in the film did as it didn’t really matter since nobody in the States knew who the hell they were. Note that the dubbing doesn’t even attempt to come close to the lip readings–I suppose it doesn’t matter since it would never have been convincing anyway. But the vocal performance by Lorre is still stirring, painful and gutsy.