I was just digging on the very erudite and sophisticated looking list of best movie picks by Blogcritic John Lars Ericson. I say "sophisticated" largely on the basis that I hadn't seen most of these movies, nor had I even HEARD of about half the titles.
I do however definitely dig M, and I have a little imprinted associated memory that made a perhaps unduly large impression on me. I saw the movie for the first time a couple of years ago (2001?) with Annie Oakley, best friend and future mother of my godson.
Next day we were in Bloomington wandering around a health food store, and I'm teasing with her by wandering around the store whistling the Peer Gynt theme. This was the obsessive theme of Lorre's pedophile killer, and the thread whereby he was eventually caught.
Then I heard the theme. I looked up, and there's this just perfect cute, slightly plump totally delectable stock clerk whistling the damned Peer Gynt theme while she stocked the shelves.
I about fell over. I could hardly choose between being sexually aroused versus having an orgasm of laughter.
Most likely the girl just innocently picked up the familiar theme without even being conscious of it. She was just innocently swinging that pricing gun and whistling away, pretty much oblivious to me or anyone else. God, but I felt like buying her a pretty balloon.
Imagine what kind of conversation we'd have had if I'd tried to explain my great amusement to her, though.
Probably the mace or pepper spray would wear off about the time the police were showing up. Then I'd have gotten to spend the rest of the day on their Group W bench, being checked against their master list of father rapers and such.
It was just as well that Annie was there to shuffle me out the door without talking to the poor innocent child.
She probably just wasn't ready for the Al Barger Experience.
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Article comments
1 - Cecily
M is truly one of my favorite movies. Lorre totally inhabits the role, like many of his other roles, which makes him maybe my favorite actor ever. He is repulsive and sinisterly sexual like a greedy little animal, but it's heartwrenching when he falls to pieces in the courtroom. It shows that along with the victims, the killer is a victim of his own twisted mind which he doesn't have control over. It's a strikingly modern and relevant film and an all-time classic.