Before Alfred Hitchcock rose to fame, German director Fritz Lang was con­sidered by many to be cinemas pre-eminent master of suspense. Langs thril­lers and crime epics had an abiding influence on Hitchcocks visual and nar­ra­tive storytelling, even as, years later, Hitchcocks films would in turn exert their narrative and stylistic influence on the crime films and gothic me­lo­dra­mas Lang made while in America. Significantly, both directors returned time and again to themes of murder and guilty entrapment in the films they cre­a­ted. This study considers the murder scene as the key...