This is a 1951 remake starring David Wayne as the child killer that was so brilliantly portrayed by Peter Lorre in the original 1931 film.
The remake is well made, but mostly because of Wayne's basically non-verbal performance and the fact that producer Seymour Nebenzal was only allowed to make it if it almost exactly mirrored the original. That was due to Production Code concern that the movie not include child molestation as part of the plot. In fact, before he hired director Joseph Losey, he asked fellow German ex-pat Douglas Sirk to direct, but Sirk turned the project down because he wanted to do a rewrite. (Losey also wanted to rewrite it, but for the same reasons, couldn't.)
You see the same camera work, the child is approached by a man at a candy machine, but he is only seen in the mirror and from the legs down (very menacing); the killer buys balloons for the girls he kills to pacify them and the balloon is seen floating above the power lines once the child has been killed; a child's ball that she was bouncing a moment before her death comes rolling into the frame and we know, again, a child has been killed.
The kangaroo court held by the mobsters is almost identical to the original as is the search for the killer in a giant commercial building. The motives are the same; the mob wants to get the child killer because he offends even their criminal senses and because they want good publicity from the police, press and public.
There is one very American element to the remake, however, and that's the use of psychotherapy/psychology that was sweeping the nation around this time (and which continues today). Wayne gives a speech explaining his domineering mother's hatred toward the "evil of men, just men" and his need to be punished not only for his deeds but because he is, simply that, a man.
I thought I would hate this remake but I didn't. Although not as startling and striking as the original, there is still a place for this remake I think in the catalog of American cinema. There are very good character actors as well, including Raymond Burr as a gravel-voiced mob enforcer, Howard Da Silva as a chain-smoking homicide detective, Martin Gabel as the crime boss trying to get all the mileage he can out of catching the killer and Luther Adler as an alcoholic criminal attorney who puts up a defense for Wayne and maybe himself simultaneously.
There is also the cinematography of '50s Los Angeles by Ernest Laszlo that serves as another character in the film--it appears to have been filmed on location and it is eye-opening to see this portrait of the City of Angels. Not looking very angelic.
I would have to say I liked this "M" but it is not as good as the original; maybe it isn't trying to be. Like their German roots, the film and the filmmakers seem to be searching for something uniquely American.
