Fritz Lang’s Radio Aesthetic: M. Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder

Prior to sound film’s debut the matter was arguably plain: radio was a sound medium, and film was a visual medium; radio was the purveyor of fantasized images, and film was the purveyor of fantasized sound. With the emergence of the talkie, however, a new era in film aesthetics ensued, and cinema turned to radio in order to learn from the acoustic medium’s experience with dramatic sound design. In this regard, Fritz Lang’s M serves as an excellent case study. My contention is that crucial to M’s celebrated sound track is a quintessentially radiophonic sound design.