Jody Bottum quoted Peter Lorre’s harrowing speec h at the end of Fritz Lang’s classic crime movie M , yesterday. Lorre’s performance is stunning, but the other leads are no less interesting. The role of The Safecracker, the master criminal who leads the underworld’s pursuit of the child-killer in parallel with the police, was played by the greatest German stage actor of the twentieth century, Gustav Gruendgens (1899-1963). For a generation, Gruendgens owned the role of Goethe’s Mephistopheles, and the 1960 film version of Faust based on Gruedgens’ Hamburg production remains the interpretative benchmark for Germany’s national drama.
Gruendgens was a bit Mephistophelian himself: The Klaus Mann novel Mephisto (filmed with Klaus Maria Brandauer in the title role) was based on his character, and provoked a famous lawsuit. Although Lang had a long career in Hollywood, he never again had a subject matter and actors to realize it comparable to M , which is as close to a perfect film as ever has been made.
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