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Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Filed under: Imported

Well, it wasn't the toughest movie quiz ever-- off the top of my head, I'd say that was the 1928 Disney cartoon, The Skeleton Dance, which got no answers, correct or otherwise-- but last week's clues were still apparently beyond almost everybody. Perhaps if I'd played the theme music, "Hall of the Mountain King," or even the picture of Peter Lorre above, we might have had more winners, but then I would have heard about how easy the quiz was. 

Anyway, the film in question was Fritz Lang's masterpiece, M, a movie that's as powerful today as it was 75 years ago. Watching it again, I was struck all over at how great the climactic scene is. The setup is brilliant: the crooks are after the child murderer (Lorre), but so are the cops, and it's a race to see who gets him first. The genius of the scene is the ambiguous feelings it creates in the viewer for all involved. On the one hand, you're glad to see Lorre cringing with terror (the same way his small victims undoubtedly did), but because the actor's performance has humanized him, you actually empathize for him, too. Likewise with the criminals who are after him-- you hope they get him, until it sinks in that they're killers, also.

The imdb entry for M contains some pretty interesting facts about the film's production, and this website has a very informative page about the different DVDs of the film for sale at the moment. And Roger Ebert's review of its restoration is Ebert at his best, discussing how Lang's hatred of the Nazis shaped the film. All of the above is worthwhile reading for admirers of the picture.

So congratulations as usual to the three unstumpables, without whom I sometimes wonder what I'd do for quiz winners: Wayne Palmer, E. Yarber, and Hank Parmer. Thanks and a big balloon to you all.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 8, 2005 11:32 PM

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