When Jean-Luc Godard asked the Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang in 1961 to name his greatest film, the one most likely to last, Lang did not hesitate. “M,” he said. Read the rest of the article here.
The film premiered in 1931. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party took power in 1933, and banned the film the next year. It was then stored in a vault, where it stayed for many years. Audiences didn’t get the chance to see the film again until 1966. For its video release 30 years later, it underwent a restoration that included the addition of music and sound effects that wouldn’t have been authorized by Fritz Lang (he deliberately kept certain passages quiet) and the cutting of certain scenes. The image had also been altered to fit the 4:3 screen size. These injustices were amended in 2009 for the film’s Blue-ray release. (Source: IMDb)
The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film’s copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film. (Source: IMDb)
M (Masters of Cinema) DVD+Blu-ray
A Crime is Afoot 