Austrian-born Fritz Lang made M in Germany where it premiered in May 1931 before being banned by the Nazis three years later. In 1940, parts of the film were appropriated by the Nazis in their propaganda film Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) contorting Peter Lorre's soulbaring performance for anti-Semitic ends. In retrospect, many believe M hastened Lang's departure from Germany in 1934. The Nazis were offended by the film's original title, Murderers Among Us, assuming it was about them and Lang had difficulty getting permission to make the film at the studios where it was eventually made in its entirety. 

Except from Nick Wrigley's detailed DVD review found HERE at Masters of Cinema

Disc Size: 49,343,341,654 bytes

Feature Size: 22,927,300,608 bytes

Disc Size: 44,622,296,684 bytes

Feature Size: 30,990,206,976 bytes

NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

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ADDITION - Criterion - re-issue (Dec 2004) - These captures were done a long time ago before we perfected the 'first frame' system so I can't 100% vouch for their exactness in regards to matching. They are pretty close though.

In my opinion the Criterion is the best image in regards to sharpness and contrast, but it loses some appeal as it is cropped slightly on both edges. The subtitles are superior in appearance to its nearest rival - the Eureka DVD.

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At DVDBeaver, we are big fans of Criterion. We think they are hands down the best DVD production company in the world. So when Criterion gets beat out, its news... and in this case they have never been outdone so decisively. In comparison to the October 6th, 2003 Eureka Region 2 disc release, the Criterion shows a much poorer image quality, cropping, darker and substantial damage marks, scratches and lines. I think the Criterion may be zoomed in at times as the cropping is not consistent in many images. Both have the original mono sound. The 2 disc Eureka is full of Extras. Criterion has none. Recent quote:

M (1931, Lang) "We do hope to revisit M sometime in the future, but nothing is definite at this time." - Jon Mulvaney, Aug 2003

BIG thanks to Nick Wrigley of Masters of Cinema for giving us this breakdown of the treatment of the film.

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1931 - 'M' (length 117 minutes) is registered at the Berlin censors office in April. Premiered on May 11th at 111 minutes.

1934 - 'M' banned by Nazis not to be released again for 26 years.

1960 (March) - 'M' re-released, re-edited by a third party with added sounds, dialogue, and generally regarded to be a huge botch up. Shown at 99 minutes.

1995 - restored, but this was a faulty restoration. It was framed incorrectly at 1.33:1 didn't use the best source material and actually included segments from, generally regarded as, an undesirable rehash of Lang's original film. (This is the version Criterion used).

2002 - Martin Koerber definitive restoration (Eureka version). Does not contain any "bits" from the 1960 re-release, and is the most faithful representation of what we know the 1931 release.

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So, as we see , we are almost looking at two different films. It is hard to fault Criterion, as their single layered DVD did come out 5 years before the Eureka. At the time I remember remarking to a friend how wonderful we thought the transfer was. The Eureka disc is very sharp but it is not perfect. Its sharpness and brightness are quite unusual for a film over 70 years old and if we look closely... it does have some contrast boosting and the "edge-enhancement halos" are evident (Check the grab of the large blackboard - the title "Stullenwerte"). With its flaws I would still recommend it. This is another example for North American film fans to obtain a Region-free player.

NOTE BMG ADDITION (captures since removed): The BMG release has restored and bumped sound (to 2.0), but still looks inferior to me to the Eureka release. I suspect it was from the same transfer though, with Eureka doing a better job of digital cleanup. It should be noted the BMG release has no subtitles.
When you insert the BMG DVD it starts playing a trailer of Der Blaue Engel, also a BMG release. For extra's there are text cards and photo's and a short clip of a German tv show about Fritz Lang (Portrait of Fritz Lang from Kino).

ADDITION (Quote from Torsten Kaiser - Supervisor of the Production and Digital cleanup of the 2003 Eureka DVD )

"The 2003 finalized restoration transfer for the Eureka issue are NOT the same ( as the BMG - UFA ) - and your screenshots tell you as much, too.  As I already mentioned in the audio commentary in some scenes - we did a complete new transfer on a High Definition Spirit Datacine, and corrected all the flaws that the 2002 transfer (which UFA and Arte made their masters from) had, mainly lack of detail, accuracy in sharpness and grey scale and even significant flaws in the digital clean-up.  The image now appears exactly as it does on the 35mm restoration archival protection master print. 

With reference to the issue of "haloes" and "contrast boost" - the former is a flaw not of the transfer or the compression as much as it is one of our PAL (and also NTSC) confines. At 625 line resolution maximum for PAL with only 576 reserved even for 16x9 PAL resolution issues, Standard Definition creates a huge problem when it comes to detail. The halo issue is one of them. These do not exist on 35mm or on High Definition tape. But SD can only handle substantially less in resolution and has to "compress" the lines. If one bit of information is picked up by two lines, you have a nasty flickering effect as the frequencies overlap. The overwhelming majority of major classic releases on DVD are transferred both wetgate and with the aid of the automatic process of Digital Video Noise Reduction, and the image is further "cleaned" by slightly blurring the information in the picture frame.  This allows the companies to save money on the clean-up (as wetgate fills many scratches and makes them "disappear", the same with DVNR which reduces the number of small debris and dirt) and the blur can get rid of moire patterns and crosstalk that result in the flickering - but it also dramatically reduces the resolution and detail of the entire picture frame and robs it of all its texture.     

This is not as it should be. Instead, we did not utilize any of the mentioned processes, making the transfer from the best film element possible without any automatic tools. No blur, either. Now, we could have made a flickering here or there (in scenes wherever it occurs) disappear as well - but what about the rest of the frame, where all the detail is perfectly preserved ?  Should it be sacrificed ?  Should Peter Lorre look soft and out of focus because a very tiny frequency flutter is in the background ?  What about clothing, set design, sign posts ?  It all would have looked dull. That is why I took the consious decision to keep all possible detail intact - why I went for maximum in texture rather than an overall "undisturbed image", the mistake that was done in 2002 - which merely would have been a result of additional technological "fakery" anyway, and would have little to do with what's on the 35mm element. We corrected this in 2003.

Finally, with regard to the "contrast boost" - this is no flaw. This is the actual image from the 35mm element as the scene was lit brighter that the other two transfers falsely indicate. The lighting on the set was bright and gave the chalk on the board a very bright shimmer, and with the limitations of Standard Defintion the appearance is as it comes across.  But there is NO blooming. We checked it several times with reduced contrast levels on the element itself - they did still contain texture.  And tested on a 120 inch screen here at THE LASER EXAMINER the finished DVD looks very good, as does the interview with Fritz Lang (FOR EXAMPLE, FRITZ LANG) on Disc 2, that I also transferred at the same facility."

4) Criterion (2 disc re-issue) - Region 0 - NTSC FOURTH