M (German: M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder) is a 1931 German drama-thriller directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre. It was written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou and was Lang's first sound film, although he had directed more than a dozen films previously.

The film has become a classic which Lang himself considered his finest work.

The action opens with a group of children playing a game involving a song about a child murderer in the courtyard of an apartment building in Berlin. This foreshadows the appearance of Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre), a serial killer who preys on children.

The longest part of the movie is concerned with the public's reaction to a series of child murders, the frantic police investigation and, finally, the city's criminals, who organize their own manhunt because their criminal enterprises are being hampered by ever-present police activities. The audience sees Beckert only briefly until the second half of the movie; his presence is occasionally acknowledged by showing merely his shadow, shots of his body or the sound of his whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg.

Note: Prior to 1933, awards were not based on calendar years. And there were two awards given in 1932 for 'Best Actor'. That's how there are 3 'Best Actor', 2 'Best Actress' awards for 1931 films.

U.S.A. unless stated

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects. The process of filmmaking has developed into an art form and industry.

Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating – or indoctrinating – citizens. The visual elements of cinema give motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue into the language of the viewer.

Films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as persistence of vision, whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Viewers perceive motion due to a psychological effect called beta movement.

Peter Lorre (26 June 1904 – 23 March 1964) was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.

He caused an international sensation with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M (1931). Later he became a popular featured player in Hollywood crime films and mysteries, in particular with Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet, and as the star of the successful Mr. Moto detective series.

Lorre was born László Löwenstein on 26 June 1904, as the first child of Jewish couple Alajos Löwenstein and Elvira Freischberger, in the Austrian-Hungarian town of Ružomberok in present-day Slovakia, then known by its Hungarian name Rózsahegy. His parents had recently moved there, following his father's appointment as chief bookkeeper at a local textile mill. Beside working as a bookkeeper, Alajos Löwenstein also served as a lieutenant in the Austrian army reserve, which meant that he was often away on military manoeuvres. When Lorre was four years old, his mother died, probably of food poisoning, leaving Alajos with three very young sons, the youngest only a couple of months old. He soon remarried, to his wife's best friend, Melanie Klein, with whom he had two more children. However, Lorre and his stepmother never got on, and this coloured his childhood memories.

Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute. His most famous films are the groundbreaking Metropolis (the world's most expensive silent film at the time of its release) and M, made before he moved to the United States, his iconic precursor to the film noir genre.

Lang was born in Vienna as the second son of Anton Lang (1860–1940), an architect and construction company manager, and his wife Pauline "Paula" Lang née Schlesinger (1864–1920). Fritz Lang himself was baptized on 28 December 1890 at the Schottenkirche in Vienna.

Lang's parents were of Moravian^{[citation needed]} descent and practicing Roman Catholics. His mother was born Jewish, but had converted to Catholicism when Fritz was ten. His mother took this conversion seriously and was dedicated to raising Fritz as a Catholic. Lang never had an interest in his Jewish heritage and identified himself as Catholic. Although he was not a particularly devout Catholic, he "regularly used Catholic images and themes [in] his films".