Nichols opens his essay by stating that “(d)ocumentary films address the historical world itself rather than construct an imaginary or fictional world. They (…) invite engagement with their representation of the historical world (…) by emotional or persuasive means.” (99) Therefore they are “not necessary argumentative, didactic, or propagandistic.” (100) Documentary films “draw us into a particular perspective on the world and invite us to experience the world in a distinct way. Engaging the viewer in a distinct perspective emotionally or persuading the viewer of a particular perspective intellectually go hand in hand in documentary, even though different films vary the balance between these two goals.” (100)

Documentary films have an “indexical relationship” (i.e. the image strictly corresponds to what it represents), which “allows the image to represent a specific aspect of the historical world with great accuracy.” (106) However, the way how one interprets images “remains a matter of interpretation, of what signifieds get attached, even to indexical signifiers.” (108) Interpretation is a matter of the interpreter’s “skills, background, and motives” (108).

Documentary films can “uphold (…) contest, alter, or subvert” (109) a dominant ideology of a specific moment, therefore they must be persuasive. “To be effective a documentary sets out to do three things: 1) establish the credibility of the filmmaker; 2) provide a convincing argument; 3) achieve a compelling form of presentation.” So, a documentary can be successful “if it is believed.” (109) The documentary must thus adhere to the “Three C’s of rhetoric” (109), i.e. it must be “credible, convincing, compelling” (109).

Nichols then explains the six modes (involving each mode „a set of conventions for representing reality“ – p. 114) of documentary film as follows:

Expository: it’s „the most common way of representing reality“ (114), documentaries in this mode „receive much of their organizing structure from what the guiding voice says.” (115) This voice, speaking directly to the audience, can be the “unseen voice of God (…) external to the events depicted” (114) or the “visible voice of authority, someone both seen and heard” (1114-5); This “expository voice represents the viewpoint of the filmmaker.” (115)

“(…) images often serve t illustrate what is said (…) serving to advance the overall argument.” (115) Another important feature of this mode is “evidentiary editing, which represents the best possible visible evidence” (114).

Poetic: “a major link between the documentary and the avant-garde film. It stresses form or pattern over an explicit argument, even though it may well have an implicit perspective on some aspects of the historical world.” (116) It focuses on the aesthetics of what is shown. This mode, “breaks with continuity editing to build patterns that simulate the look and feel of real-world activities and processes.” (116-7) It mostly lacks verbal commentary.

Observational: also referred to as “direct cinema, (it) returns to the fiction-like stress on the continuity of time and space.” (117) It tries to “capture the unfolding duration of what (takes) place in front of the camera (…), events likely to occur in the form they do whether a camera is present or not” (117). This mode “give(s) a vivid sense of what it feels like to share the specific world of particular individuals at a giving moment in time.” (118) Its strength resides in its “immediacy and access to specific (…) moments” (118), its weakness in its “inability to give a broader, historical picture” (118).

Participatory: also called “interactive documentary or cinéma vérité”, it is a mode in which “the participatory filmmaker becomes an openly integral part of what happens in front of the camera. Interviews, which only occur because the camera is present, are a staple of participatory films.“ (118) “The film becomes a record of the interactions of subjects and filmmaker.” (119) It can also “combine interviews with footage that illustrates what the speaker refers to. (120) This mix of interviews and archival footage has “become the dominant mode for recounting historical events.” (121)

Reflexive: this mode “draws attention to the type of the film the documentary is. It makes the viewer aware of the conventions, the expectations and assumptions that usually go unspoken. It stimulates reflection on the viewing process and how it differs from viewing a fiction film.” (122)

Performative: it “stresses emotional involvement with what it is like to witness a particular kind of experience.” (124) This mode “rel(ies) less heavily on commentary to convey information than on form to convey emotion.” (124) Performative documentaries “seek (…) to draw us into an affective, experiential engagement with what it feels like to encounter the world from a specific perspective and in a particular time and place. (…) (They) do more than convey information or mount an argument. Like fiction films, documentaries can be a source of deeply felt and long remembered emotional experiences.” (125)

Nichols then talks about the style of the documentary film, which “ranges from plain to ornate. (…) The choice of what style to use is a question of what is fitting for the subject and purpose.” (126) Decorum is the term Nichols refers to the choice of style. Examples: Leni Riefenstahl’s pompous style in Triumph of the Will vs. Michael Moore’s “plain-talking, straight-acting Everyman”’s (127) style vs. hyperbolic style in Hanson’s 8 Mile.

As Nichols states before explaining the six modes of documentary films, although one mode is dominant in a film, the modes “can be mixed and matched in any film” (114), as, I believe, it is the case of Lanzmann’s Shoah. The dominant mode in Shoah is very evidently the Participatory Mode (see Nichols p. 119-120). However, in some scenes, other modes prevail. In the long shots of the Polish forest, the trees planted by the Nazis to hide the atrocities they were committing, as well as of the vast clearing among the trees where the Jews were burnt and buried, the beauty of such wilderness reminds me of the Poetic Mode. Also, the fact that Shoah deals with the Holocaust, and therefore with Jewish people, reminds me of the Performative Mode.

Simon Srebnik coming back to the Chelmno forest and singing Polish and German songs; Motke Zaïdl and Itzhak Dugin standing in an Israeli forest that resembles the Ponari forest in Lithuania, telling how they re-opened the mass graves in the Lithuanian forest; the train driver looking out while arriving at the Treblinka station; and finally also the scene described by Nichols of Abraham Bomba cutting hair during Lanzmann’s interview – all these reenactments remind me of the Observational Mode.

In his essay, Kaes underlines Lang’s aversion toward the sound film: “(r)umors had spread about his fundamental opposition to sound.” (Kaes, 16), and when the UFA urged Lang “to ‘modernise’ the film (Woman in the Moon SR) and add a soundtrack, he flatly refused and instead left his long-term employer before his contract expired.” (Kaes, 16). A striking aspect of M is the thrifty use of sound throughout the film, and the reduction of its use to the minimum makes the film almost work like a silent film. I’d like to suggest that this peculiar use (or not use) of sound has a specific goal.

As Doane points out, the “fear on the part of the audience of being ‘cheated’ is one of the factors which initially limits the deployment of sonorous material” (Doane, 276). I believe that Lang’s use of sound in this film mostly aims precisely to cheat the audience, to mock sound cinema. As already mentioned, the diegetic sound throughout the film is reduced to the minimum (mostly steps and dialogues), and sometimes it is sudden and very short, like for instance the sound of heavy traffic, to which no actual images correspond, while there is no hint of such traffic anywhere in the film. Belton states that “(s)ound lacks ‘objectivity’ (thus authenticity) not only because it is invisible but because it is an attribute and is thus incomplete it itself. Sound achieves authenticity only as a consequence of its submission to tests imposed upon it by other senses – primarily the sight.” (Belton, 290) I’d go a step further and suggest that in M sound sometimes is not only not objective, but also sheer useless, even counterproductive.

The voices of people talking on the street are peculiar too: their clear echoes make it evident that “M is entirely a studio production” (Kaes, 9), the film was in fact shot in the “Staaken studios (a former Zeppelin hangar from World War I)” (Kaes, 15); the dimension of the hangar explains the echoes of the voices in the film. I do not think that people working at the film did not realize it. I believe they kept it that way to produce a “contradiction between word (sound in this case SR) and image” (Kaes, 24), which reminds of Brecht’s Epic Theater.

Moreover, the voice of a character sometimes becomes the voiceover of the following scenes, and here the film strongly reminds me of documentary films. Nevertheless this commenting voice is slightly different from the voiceover in documentary as Doane describes it: “(t)he voiceover commentary in documentary (…) is, in effect, disembodied. (…) It is precisely because the voice is not localizable, because it cannot be yoked to a body, that it is capable of interpreting the image, producing its truth.” (Doane, 281), since we know whom each voice belongs to. Anyways, such scenes endowed with a voiceover are the description of the fingerprints (15:52 – 16:15), the handwriting and the psyche of the murderer (16:39 – 17:13), the engagement of the policemen (17:35 – 18:12), the investigation (18:13 – 19:29; 21:05 – 21:56), the old distillery where the mock trial takes place (1:34:50 – 1:35:03), and finally the report of the burglary (1:28:54 – 1:30:08). This voiceover however does not work like Doane’s documentary voiceover, “in which the sound carries the burden of ‘information’ while the impoverished image simply fills the screen.” (Doane, 282), because given the diegesis of the film, I think that all those scenes speak for themselves and they actually do not need any explaining voiceover; therefore I’d suggest that Lang used sound here to show its uselessness in fictional films.

Interestingly enough, the moments before the raid into the criminals’ bar (22:11 – 23.22), when cars brakes on the street with countless policemen getting off and walking toward the bar, is completely silent. A scene, which one could expect to be rather loud is soundless, but nevertheless it works well. Here, again, I’d suggest that Lang wanted to point out the superficiality of sound.

On the other hand, there is a specific sound that plays a peculiar role in the film, i.e. the sound of whistles, which stands for moments of discovery: whistles sound loudly when the criminals realize that the police are storming into bar (23:23); Inspector Lohmann whistles when he understands that one of the criminals’ ID is a counterfeit (26:43); a loud whistle is to be heard when the criminals enter the entrance of the building where they know they will find Beckert (1:11:11); and Kaes interprets Beckert’s whistling Peer Gynt as a sound that “subtly exteriorizes his subconscious, also suggesting the punishment that he expects and want” (Kaes, 21), and thus his desire to be discovered.

As already mentioned, I believe that the way Lang employs sound in M represents his plea for the silent movie. The most important scene in the film, the scene in which Beckert’s guilt and perversion is the most evident, is almost completely silent. I’m referring to the scene when we see for the first time Beckert’s reaction to the sight of a little girl (in the scene with Elsie Beckmann at the beginning of the film, we don’t see his face as only his shadow and his back are shown). The initial and the final parts of the sequence (52:33 – 53:20 and 54:18 – 54:45) are completely silent; in between there are the traffic sounds, his whistling of Peer Gynt, and finally the conversation between the little girl and her mother. But the shots where we see his physical reaction to the sight of the girl and to the missed opportunity to kill another child are completely soundless. I think here Lang wants his film to be silent to better emphasize Lorre’s magnificent acting and facial expression. As Doane states, ”(t)he absent voice reemerges in gestures and the contortions of the face – it is spread over the body of the actor.” (Doane, 275) And as a matter of fact “Lorre fascinated Lang because his round, child-like face and his corpulent body seemed to conceal a demonic force which might erupt at any moment.” (Kaes, 25) The use of sound here would probably distract the audience from Lorre’s bravura performance, which would find a more appropriate setting in the silent film.