My thoughts on the opening of M probably reflect what others have said over the course of the day. I do find it uniquely interesting that the film begins with the children's point of view of the crime. Rather than throw us into a world of gangsters or police, we are put in a world where the victims - who are the most vulnerable people as children - don't see their own danger as dangerous.
It also gets to the heart of noir, at least in my view, where the filmmaker looks at the lower classes and the darker corners of the world. Lang isn't going to take the viewer to upper-class society and eve