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Watched for class* * “One man is terrorizing 4.5 million people!” Lang understood the potential in tempo more than any other director of his time. He understood the speed of filmic narratives. Each scene transition is not only a monumental jump in time, but also a thorough continuation via the match cut. Lang was really good at understanding socioeconomic stratification i.e. who the police serve and what/where socializes a killer as well. It’s almost anti-expressionism. Lorre’s world is not externalized in some sort of intensely stylized fashion, but reveals itself in Berlin as it is. The official structure perpetuates and offers insufficient rehabilitation, and the people seek to imprint these issues onto a scapegoat. Probably Lang’s most powerful ending. Either way, they’re gone. It’s the fault of social conditions that bring these perverse unconscious desires out of Lorre’s character, and any reckoning afterwards—from the good samaritans of the proletariat to the police powers above them—simply reflects these social condition, where the police raid their bars, and the workers seek retribution they could not otherwise achieve.