A haunting musical phrase whistled offscreen sets the stage, intimating the imminent demise of a young girl. "Who Is the Murderer?" pleads a nearby placard as serial killer Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) closes in on little Elsie Beckmann. In his masterful work M, Fritz Lang masterfully blends incisive social commentary with chilling suspense, creating a panorama of private madness and public hysteria that remains the blueprint for the psychological thriller to this day.

The Blu-ray Special Edition features a new, restored high-definition digital transfer with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. Commentary is provided by German film scholars Anton Kaes, author of the BFI Film Classics volume on M, and Eric Rentschler, author of The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife. The long-lost English-language version of M, preserved by the British Film Institute, is also included.

Conversation with Fritz Lang, a 50-minute film by William Friedkin, offers insight into the director's creative process. Claude Chabrol's short film M le maudit, inspired by Lang's work, is accompanied by a video interview with Chabrol discussing Lang's filmmaking techniques. A video interview with Harold Nebenzal, son of M producer Seymour Nebenzal, provides additional context.

Classroom audiotapes of editor Paul Falkenberg discussing the film and its history are set to clips from the movie, while a documentary explores the physical journey of M, from production to distribution to digital restoration. Galleries of behind-the-scenes photographs and production sketches offer a glimpse into the film's creation.

The disc also includes a new and improved English subtitle translation, as well as an essay by film critic Stanley Kauffmann, a 1963 interview with Lang, the script for a missing scene, and three contemporaneous newspaper articles. This comprehensive Blu-ray Special Edition allows viewers to fully immerse themselves in the rich and influential world of Fritz Lang's M.

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