How does M relate to German Expressionism?
I’m not sure “M” qualifies as film noir, a term that hadn’t yet been invented and that is usually used to describe postwar crime dramas with an existential sense of fatalism and dread. “M” does owe a great debt however to German Expressionism, as you’ve noted, particularly in its use of shadow and odd camera angles and its frequently paranoid emotional state. As a sound movie, however, it also makes brilliant use of sound effects (the whistling, for instance) and dialogue, using tools unavailable to the silent-era Expressionists. And in Peter Lorre, it has a star who gives a fully-rounded, oddly sympathetic, thoroughly human performance — nothing like the deliberately mannered, stagy performances of the Expressionist films.
