Meanwhile, Police Inspector Carney (Howard Da Silva) has a psychiatrist examining patients who have been released from mental hospitals as possible suspects.
[7] Losey would later leave the U.S. and settle in the UK to make films there, notably his collaborations with writer Harold Pinter: The Servant (1963), Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1971).
[8] Robert Aldrich was Losey's assistant director on M.[8] The film was shot on location in downtown Los Angeles, including the now demolished Victorian neighborhood of Bunker Hill.
The most spectacular footage occurs in a lengthy sequence shot inside the Bradbury Building on the southeast corner of Broadway and Third, a block east of Angels Flight.
Luther Adler, as a drunken lawyer member of a gangster mob, turns in an outstanding performance, as do Martin Gabel, the gang-leader, and Howard da Silva and Steve Brodie as police officials ... Joseph Losey's direction has captured the gruesome theme skilfully.
[10] Just as the rising threat of fascism in Germany informed director Fritz Lang’s 1931 original production, Losey’s treatment was influenced by the Red Scare and blacklist of the late 1940s and 1950s.
In his M, a reactionary community proves itself “mercilessly efficient in exorcizing alien elements from its midst.”[11] Film historian Foster Hirsch points to stylistic and thematic parallels between the two versions, but cautions that Losey may suffer from comparisons.
Lang demonstrated “unsurpassed” cinematic control over his resources: “his M is the work of a film master.”[12] Losey’s remake was crafted when he was developing his talents, lacking the “experience and artistic freedom to compete with Lang.” Studio constraints limited Losey to making stylistic facsimile of the earlier film, and, “wasn’t permitted a truly original handling of the material.”[13] Nonetheless, similarities emerge: Both directors are preoccupied with enclosure and entrapment; both share a deterministic world-view.
Senses of Cinema’s Dan Callahan reports that “Wayne delivers this complex speech superbly (Losey reports that when he finished the cast and crew burst into applause.”[16] Lorre’s “ecstatic” interpretation is reminiscent of characters from Greek mythology or Christian scripture, invoking “Orestes Pursued by the Furies, or Satan expelled from heaven and suffering the torments of hell.”[17]