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How does Fritz Lang use offscreen sound to create suspense in M?
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Fritz Lang
Although it took Fritz Lang some 21 years to make 22 Hollywood films, arguably at least half of them are noirish masterpieces of menace. His time in Hollywood, which began in 1934, followed a directing career in Germany during the 1920s that included several landmark films.
In his 1931 thriller M, German director Fritz Lang utilized offscreen sound to heighten suspense and horror without explicitly depicting violence.
The most prominent example of this technique is the use of a leitmotif involving the character Hans Beckert, played by Peter Lorre. Beckert whistles the melody of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Edvard Griegâs Peer Gynt before each of his crimes. By having the audience hear this melody before seeing the perpetrator or the act itself, Lang creates an atmosphere of encroaching terror and entrapment. This reliance on auditory cues rather than visual gore allows the director to build psychological tension, effectively forcing the viewer to imagine the horror unfolding offscreen.1