Daily Dialogue — October 14, 2013
HANS BECKERT: Who are you? All of you. Criminals. Probably proud of it, too… proud you can crack a safe or sneak into houses or cheat at cards. All of which it seems to me you could just as easily give up if you had learned something useful, or if you had jobs or if you weren’t such lazy pigs. But me? Can I do anything about it? Don’t I have this cursed thing inside me? This fire, this voice, this agony?
DER SCHRANKER: So you mean to say… you have to kill?
HANS BECKERT: I have to roam the streets endlessly, always sensing that someone’s following me. It’s me! I’m shadowing myself! Silently… but I still hear it! Yes, sometimes I feel like I’m tracking myself down. I want to run… run away from myself! But I can’t! I can’t escape from myself! I must take the path that it’s driving me down and run and run down endless streets! I want off! And with me run the ghosts of the mothers and children. They never go away. They’re always there! Always! Always! Except… when I’m doing it… when I… Then I don’t remember a thing. Then I’m standing before a poster reading what I’ve done. I read and read… I did that? I don’t remember a thing! But who will believe me? Who knows what it’s like inside me? How it screams and cries out inside me when I have to do it! Don’t want to! Must! Don’t want to! Must! And then a voice cries out, and I can’t listen anymore! Help! I can’t! I can’t!
— M (1931), screenplay by Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou, Paul Falkenberg, Adolf Jansen, Karl Vash
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is psychotic, suggested by JasperLamarCrab. Today’s suggestion by Adam Scott Thompson.
Trivia: What convinced Fritz Lang to make the film was his reading of the last scene in the script, when a mother ominously warns, “You have to watch your children”.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Adam: “So many chocolate chips embedded in this cookie of a scene. Beckert is at the mercy of a kangaroo court composed of criminals and those seeking back alley justice. His impassioned monologue humanizes what until this moment was a wild animal snuffing out little children on impulse. He also indicts the criminals who’ve cornered him, saying that, while his brutal acts are an uncontrollable compulsion, their illegal actions — which include murder — are choices they make, often proudly. Ultimately, he fails to acquit himself — they intended to execute him anyway — but there isn’t a person in the room unaffected by his speech. And the viewer is left to wonder: If, instead of nicotine/ drugs/ alcohol/ sex/ hoarding/ stamp collecting/ etc., their “attractioin” was to child murder, would they want leniency and understanding?”