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The free public film series "The Screening Room: Classics, Crowd-Pleasers, Cult Favorites and Neglected Gems" continues this week with Peter Lorre’s star-making performance in Fritz Lang’s intense and unnerving 1931 crime drama "M."

The German-made suspense thriller – directed by Vienna-born filmmaker Lang ("Spies," "Metropolis," "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse") just three years before he fled the Third Reich for Hollywood – will be screened at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 14, at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library, 350 N. Wood Ave., downtown Florence.

Blending the visual style of German expressionism with Lang’s innovative use of the relatively new technology of sound, M features future Hollywood favorite Lorre ("Mad Love," "The Maltese Falcon," "Casablanca") as a psychotic child murderer who wanders the streets of Berlin. The mysterious killer manages to elude police until leaders of the city’s organized criminal underground decide to intervene and end his reign of terror and bloodshed.

“I made 'M' because I was interested in what went on (…) in a man who kills children,” Lang later explained. “It was the only time I ever had a completely free hand, when no one else could interfere in the script or in the editing. And my contract stated that the film could not be cut.”

"The Screening Room" is hosted by film historian and Pillar of Fire founder Terry Pace, who teaches English at the University of North Alabama. Screenings are free and open to the public.

For more information, call the library at (256) 764-6564 or Pillar of Fire at (256) 366-4512, or e-mail pillaroffire@bellsouth.net.

“I can’t help myself! I have no control over this … this evil thing inside me – the fire, the voices, the torment!” – Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) in Fritz Lang’s "M" (1931)
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