The poster for director Joseph Losey's M promises to deliver "the greatest motion picture you've ever seen!". This, of course, isn't true; in fact, it isn't even the great motion picture entitled M you'll ever see. The original movie of the same title, directed by Fritz Lang, is possibly one of the finest pieces of cinema ever made, and one that reflected the political turmoil of Germany at the time as the Weimar Republic start to collapse under the increasing power of the Nazis. Douglas Sirk, a German working in Hollywood, was first approached to helm the remake, but wanted to scrap the original premise but keep the focus on a notorious child-killer. This could not happen, as such a grisly topic was banned in Hollywood, but would be allowed if it was a remake of a classic. Sirk held his ground, and so M was handed to Losey instead.

Martin W. Harrow (David Wayne) is a reclusive serial killer who has already gained notoriety throughout the city after a few dead bodies were found, minus their shoes. Inspector Carney (Howard Da Silva) feels the pressure of expectation, resorting to desperate measures by fleecing the regulars at a known criminal hangout in the hope of stumbling upon a clue or lead, as the city's residents are in high- paranoia mode, reporting anyone acting remotely suspicious or seen walking with a child. One old man is hauled in after helping a young girl take her skates off after a fall. Syndicate boss Charlie Marshall (Martin Gabel),seeking an opportunity to divert the attention away from his own criminal activities, rounds up his gang of crooks and brings in drunken lawyer Dan Langley (Luther Adler) in the hope of tracking down the murderer himself.

Any American remakes of foreign masterpieces will always be looked upon with some degree of disdain, and I must admit that I went into M expecting a pointless re-hash of what came before. However, under the disguise of a film noir, Losey's M is a damn good movie, with the panic-stricken city eager to turn over their neighbour in the hope of sleeping easy at night easily comparable with Joseph McCarthy's Communist witch-hunts terrorising Hollywood at the time, which saw industry giants pressured into naming names and exiling their co-workers onto the Blacklist. As Harrow, Wayne is subtly effective, sweet-talking his victims and luring them with his whistle. More focus is given to his character than in Lang's film, and Wayne manages to invite more sympathy than Peter Lorre's incarnation as he is eventually hauled in front of a public jury. It certainly doesn't have the dramatic weight or technical wizardry of the 1931 version, but Losey's effort stands out as one of the most gripping noirs of its era.

If the mastodons over at the House Un-American Activities Committee hadn't enough reason to blacklist Joseph Losey than his remake of Fritz Lang's classic M gave it to them. This is Losey's best broadside against the witch hunts and the blind panic the gripped vast sections of the American public ferreting out Communists and their fellow travelers.

There's a serial killer of little girls operating in a small American city and it's got the police baffled. With conditions as they are the police turning up the heat, organized crime types can't operate so the local Don played by Martin Gabel starts his own manhunt. He can move into places local police chief Howard DaSilva can't.

The killer is mild mannered David Wayne a truly pitiable sort when unmasked. His devolution of defenses is something to see.

Good ensemble cast worked with the leads. A good remake of a classic.

One of the difficult things about shooting a movie in Los Angeles is that the city itself seems so dull. Every vista looks flat and tends to fall into one or another of two types. There are the wide car-choked boulevards with used car lots and Chinese restaurants, or there are the sterile, empty residential areas of trimmed lawns and ranch houses. Fast food dispensaries proudly proclaim, "Serving the Public Since 2009." There is no downtown. Some films manage to overcome this disadvantage. "Chinatown" was one. This one partially succeeds. The urban setting here has a texture to it. Not just the familiar Bradbury Building (in which Neff tried to outwit Keyes) or the Santa Monica pier but hills with steps, and multilayered wooden apartments, and corner candy stores. The location scout should get a screen credit.

Few remakes live up to the original, even if the remake was directed by a young Joseph Losey. It's pretty thoroughly Americanized. In the original, Peter Lorre was the helpless child killer. Here, David Wayne is driven by ego-alien impulses too but Lang gave Lorre no facile excuse, whereas this script has Wayne hating his mother and taking his rage out on little girls. He was probably abused as a child. That accounts for all rudeness these days, doesn't it? Lang's treatment is both less sentimental and more in line with what psychologists know about serial killers, which is virtually nothing. Not all the changes are dumb. Instead of being trapped in the wooden bin of a warehouse, Wayne (and a kidnapped girl) are stuck in a room jammed with plastic mannequins and the air is full of legs dangling as if recently severed. What really freaks me about those mannequins is that their feet are shaped into smooth wedges but they have no toes.

I don't think I'll go farther into the plot. Wayne is hauled up before "a jury of his peers" and defended by a drunk but I can't discuss the case out of court.

Wayne has a heavy duty speech at his mock trial. The camera doesn't cut away from him for a long while. And he handles it pretty well -- not like Lorre, whose only justification is that he's in the grip of his obsession, but equally pathetic.

In general, Lang's is the better film because, for one thing, it was an original, not a remake. For another, the agency of social control was Berlin's horde of beggars and small-time thieves in 1931 who formed a convincing network. Losey's movie loses that sense of solidarity and tries to being together too disparate a group: juvenile delinquents, rich racketeers, a black shoe shine boy. And Lang's depiction of police procedure is more explicit and more interesting. This version looks like a gangster movie.

On his hunting trips, Lorre whistled a piece from Grieg's "Peer Gynt", "In the Hall of the Mountain King," which was both catchy and a little ominous. Here, David Wayne plays a lugubrious tune in a minor key on a flute, bespeaking utter misery and impending doom. The overall effect of these and other modifications is just to simplify the story by reducing, or eliminating, the ambiguity. Everything is spelled out for the viewer, as in a kindergarten class where the ABCs are being taught.