Losey did not conceive of M as a remake of Fritz Lang's most famous film; “I wanted the man to be more sympathetic, for one thing,” he stated in Sight and Sound. Losey's story is an American one, shot on location in an eerie concrete jungle recognizable as Los Angeles. David Wayne gives an extraordinary performance as the killer of children who is hunted by underworld and police figures alike. David Thomson writes in Biographical Dictionary of Films: “(In) M, Losey was hoping to comment on American society as directly as Lang had on Germany. In fact, M is a marvelous, frightening film, years ahead of its time and typical of (Losey's) American virtues: narrative economy; sustained camera set-ups based on dynamic composition; the ability to make characters reveal themselves quickly and naturally; and the power to get good performances from actors. The policeman in The Prowler (see September 14) and the murderer in M are flawed men, driven to their own destruction by an unwholesome society that they inadequately comprehend.... In...these films, Losey was able to use the thriller genre for larger purposes so that the ambitions seem uplifting, the melodrama expanding to support the metaphor.”