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Some scenes are just mute (some others should be) and sometimes the subbing is quite obvious but that´s not really a problem. Lang whistles himself the killer´s leitmotiv ('The Hall Of The Mountain King') and brings from opera one of the most successful tricks in the filmmakers bag, one that was impossible to use before: one song means one character even if you can´t see him. The use of the new elements that sound brings to the writer pallete is quite efective in this movie and that shows the craftmanship of Lang´s (and his wife´s) script. They are inventing the most basic bricks of sounding film´s storytelling and that´s one of the reasons this is considered a masterpiece.
The visual aspect of the movie is also very developed as you could expect from someone like Lang (Metropolis anyone?). The ever present cigar smoke, the lighting that can transform the most lowest of the characters into a messenger of the angriests gods or frame the most excruciating fear. The use of shadows and reflections try to transform the most simple situations into something darker and bigger.
Pete Lorre gets here his passport to almost-fame in hollywood (having to flee from the nazi regime kinda of 'helped') and he deserves it. His acting is as over the top as you could have expected from a silent movie but that´s how the magic of this between worlds film works. It has the powerfull and theatrical imagery from the old times and the useful closeness and power of voice acting.
The argument relies too much in the predisposition of the german watchers from 1931 to feel disgusted and fascinated by the morbid crimes and the laughable (I´m sorry but it is) hunt of a kid killer. It must be said that this is a very oportunistic movie. The script uses the fact that Germany had a bunch of serial killers in the twenties and one very recently (Peter Kürten, the vampire of Düsseldorf) who had striken a new kind of horror in the in-between-wars german law abiding population.
The thing is that you cant get darker in a noir movie without going to just pitch black. Here the useless police is defeated by a weird and unbelievable band of lowlifes, beggars and criminals who try to get justice done by themselves. Of course the script deprives them from winning to the legal authorities in the very last moment but the message is loud and clear: people, normal people, people who are willing to dirty their hands should take this kind of matters in their own hands and protect their streets (it´s a very urban movie). "Watch your children" says the grieving mother in the end. Watch and defend yourself and those who can´t do it themselves. Even if the police officers talk about the way the city people get in the way of their investigations they say it as if the civilians should do a better work not exactly stopping. The whole movie is a schizophrenic recruit movie for vigilantes.
Getting back to the best moments of the film it has some great and memorable shots. The way the killer is haunted before getting himself into an office building, shot from above like the kids play in the very beginning, will be repeated a thousand times in other movies. The delinquent mass shouting and asking for blood, the from below shot of a fat smoking detective sitting at his desk, the long set of stairs that the camera covers in the office building scene, that blinding light that hits a terrorized Lorre when his character is found and of course the final confession of his compulsions will live forever in my mind.
That last confession, the best scene (or at least the most intense) in the whole movie, the final climax, is the result of a great actor being tortured by a great, if cruel, director. Lang had Lorre bruised and exhausted him to get that monologue nailed... he also lost that actor forever, a shame for the noir genre, this two were right for each other. It´s hard to believe that Lorre was a comedy actor before this!
The worst elements are the procedural elements in the search and hunt of the killer. In fact the first fifty minutes, the thirty five after the first time the killer face is shown to be precise because the very beginning is a great way to set the 'stage', drag the movie down. When they interest moves from how to capture him to actually doing it and the consecuences afterwards the movie is again really interesting. At least the silly moments of the argument are compensated with some great shots of people smoking, dicussing, arguing and planning. What they are plotting is, in fact, irrelevant but you won't care.
The fact that it´s such an old and located movie (made for an specific population and culture) doesn´t means that you cant enjoy it. Most of the scenes feel like if they were shot one or two decades later. And that´s it´s magic.
You should try it and then compare it with everything you watch from that point on. You´ll find that there are not so much movies in it´s league.
9/10
