Peeping Tom (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peeping Tom
Directed by	Michael Powell
Produced by	Nat Cohen
Written by	Leo Marks
Starring	Carl Boehm Anna Massey Moira Shearer Maxine Audley Brenda Bruce Miles Malleson
Music by	Brian Easdale
Distributed by	Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors
Release date(s)	May 16, 1960
Running time	101 min
Language	English
Budget	£135,000 (estimated)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Peeping Tom is a 1960 psychological thriller film by the British film director Michael Powell. The title derives from 'peeping Tom', a slang expression for a voyeur. The film is a horrific tale of voyeurism, serial murder and child abuse. The story revolves around a young man who murders women while using a portable movie camera to record their dying expressions of terror. The film was written by the World War II cryptographer and polymath Leo Marks.

[edit] Synopsis

The protagonist, Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), meets a prostitute, covertly filming her with a camera hidden under his coat. Shown from the point-of-view of the camera viewfinder, tension builds as he follows the girl into her house, murders her and later watches the film in his den as the credits roll on the screen.

Anna Massey and Carl Boehm

Lewis is a member of a film crew who aspires to become a film-maker himself. He works part-time photographing lurid pictures of women. He is a shy, reclusive young man who hardly ever socializes outside of his workplace. He lives in his father's house, leasing part of it and acting as the landlord, while pretending to be just another tenant. Mark is fascinated by the boisterous family living downstairs and especially by Helen (Anna Massey), a vivacious sweet-natured girl who pities him. A friendship deepens into a serious relationship between them.

Mark reveals to Helen through home movies taken by his father (played by director Powell in a cameo) that, as a child, he was used as a guinea pig for his father's psychological experiments in fear and the nervous system. Mark's father would study his son's reaction to various stimuli, such as lizards he put on his bed and would film the boy in all sorts of situations, even going as far as recording his son's reactions as he sat with his mother on her deathbed. He kept his son under constant watch and even wired all the rooms so that he could spy on him. The father's studies made his reputation as a psychologist.

Mark arranges with Vivian (Moira Shearer), a stand-in at the studio, to make a film after the set is closed. He kills her and stuffs her into a prop trunk. The body is discovered later by the horrified film crew. The police link the two murders and notice that each victim died with a look of utter terror on her face. They interview everyone on the set and become suspicious of Mark, who has his camera always running, always recording and who claims that he's making a documentary.

A psychiatrist, called to the set to console the upset star of the movie, chats with Mark and tells him that he is familiar with his father's work. The psychiatrist relates the details of the conversation to the police, noting that Mark had 'his father's eyes.'

Mark is then tailed by the police who follow him to the building where he takes photographs of the pin-up model Milly (real-life glamour queen Pamela Green). Two versions of this scene were shot, one less risqué than the other. The more risqué version is credited as being the first female nude scene in a major British feature. Mark kills Milly and then heads home.

Helen, who is curious about Mark's films, finally runs one of them. She becomes visibly upset and frightened when he catches her. Mark reveals that he makes the movies so that he can capture the fear of his victims. He has mounted a round mirror atop his camera, so that he can capture the reactions of his victims as they see their impending deaths.

The police arrive and Mark realizes that he is finished. As he had planned from the very beginning, he impales himself with a knife attached to one of the camera's tripod legs, killing himself the same way he dispatched his victims, and with the camera running, provides the finale for his documentary.

[edit] Themes

Peeping Tom has been praised for its psychological complexity.^[1] On the surface, the film is about the Freudian relationship between the protagonist and his father and the protagonist and his victims. However, several critics argue that the film is as much about the voyeurism of the audience as they watch the protagonist's actions. For example, Roger Ebert, in his review of the film, states that "The movies make us into voyeurs. We sit in the dark, watching other people's lives. It is the bargain the cinema strikes with us, although most films are too well-behaved to mention it."^[2] In this reading, Lewis is an allegory of the director of a horror film. In horror movies, the directors kill victims, often innocents, to provoke responses from the audiences and to manipulate their responses. Lewis records the deaths of his victims with his camera and by using the mirror and showing each of his victims their last moments, provokes their own fear even as he kills them.

Martin Scorsese, who has long been an admirer of Powell's works, has stated that this film, along with Federico Fellini's 8½, contains all that can be said about directing:

"I have always felt that Peeping Tom and 8½ say everything that can be said about film-making, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two. 8½ captures the glamour and enjoyment of film-making, while Peeping Tom shows the aggression of it, how the camera violates... From studying them you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films."^[3]

[edit] Responses

Peeping Tom was an immensely controversial film on initial release and the critical backlash heaped on the film all but finished Powell's career.^[4] However, the film earned a cult following, and since the 1970s has received a critical reappraisal that not only salvaged Powell's reputation but also earned the film a re-evaluation. He noted ruefully in his autobiography, "I make a film that nobody wants to see and then, thirty years later, everybody has either seen it or wants to see it."

An account of the film's steady reappraisal can be found in Scorsese on Scorsese (edited by Ian Christie and David Thompson). Martin Scorsese mentions that he first heard of the film as a film student in the early 60's where Peeping Tom opened in only one theatre in the Alphabet City district of New York, which as Scorsese notes was a seedy district of the city. The film was released in a cut black-and-white print but immediately became a cult fascination among Scorsese's generation. Scorsese states that the film in its black-and-white cut form, influenced Jim McBride's David Holzman's Diary. Scorsese himself first saw the film in 1970 through a friend who owned a 35mm colour, uncut print. In 1978, Scorsese was approached by a New York distributor, Corinth Films who asked for funds for a wider re-release. Scorsese put up funds for the re-release which allowed the film's earlier cult audience to gain a wider following.^[5]

Today, the film is considered a masterpiece and one of the best British horror films: in 2004, the magazine Total Film named Peeping Tom the 24th greatest British movie of all time,^{[citation needed]} and in 2005, the same magazine listed it as the 18th greatest horror film of all time.^[6]. It was included in a BFI poll for the best British films of all time. The film was listed at #38 on Bravo Channel's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.^[7] Roger Ebert has included it in his 'Great Movies' column.^[8]

[edit] Relationship with Hitchcock's films

The themes of voyeurism in Peeping Tom are also explored in several films by Alfred Hitchcock. In his book on Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo, Charles Barr points out that Vertigo's title sequence and several shots seem to have inspired moments in Powell's film.^[9]

Chris Rodley's documentary A Very British Psycho (1997) draws comparisons between Peeping Tom and Hitchcock's Psycho; the latter film was released in June 1960, only three months after Peeping Tom's premiere. Both films feature atypically mild-mannered serial killer protagonists who are emotionally obsessed with their parents. However, despite containing similarly disturbing material to Peeping Tom, Psycho became a box-office success and only increased the popularity and fame of its director. One reason suggested in the documentary is that Hitchcock, seeing the negative press reaction to Peeping Tom, decided to release Psycho without a press screening.^[10]

It should be noted that Powell in his early career worked as a stills photographer and in other positions on Hitchcock's films and the two were friends throughout their careers.

[edit] DVD releases

Criterion Collection dvd cover

Peeping Tom has currently received releases on DVD by the following different distributors:

• Studio Canal/Warner Bros (Region 2)
  Released with just the film and a photo gallery.

• Criterion (Region 1)
  Includes the Channel Four documentary A Very British Psycho and a commentary by Laura Mulvey

• Warner Home Vidéo / L'Institut Lumière (Region 2)
  6 DVD boxed set of I Know Where I'm Going!, A Canterbury Tale and Peeping Tom
  The Peeping Tom double disk set includes:
  • Memories of Michael (Part 7) by Thelma Schoonmaker-Powell
    (In English with French subtitles); 12 min
  • A Daring Adventurer (Part 7) by Bertrand Tavernier
    (In French with English subtitles); 20 min
  • A Very British Psycho
    (In English with French subtitles); 51 min
  • My Fetish Film
    An interview by the French Director Gaspard Noé
    (In French with English subtitles); 14 min
  • The Film Poster
    An interview by the French Director Gaspard Noé
    (In French with English subtitles); 2 min

• Optimum Releasing (Region 2)
  A special edition as another of their Studio Canal re-releases, which include the 2006 special edition of Don't Look Now. It was released on March 26th 2007.
  Details follow:
  • Brand new and exclusive commentary by Ian Christie, Powell expert
  • Brand new and exclusive introduction by Martin Scorsese
  • Brand new and exclusive interview by Thelma Schoonmaker, Powell's widow and Oscar winning film editor
  • The Eye of the Beholder documentary (30 mins) Scorsese, Schoonmaker and Christie talking about the film
  • The Strange Gaze of Mark Lewis documentary (25 mins) about the psychology of the protagonist
  • Trailer
  • Booklet containing essay, interview with screenwriter Leo Marks and extract from Michael Powell’s autobiography, Million Dollar Movie
  • Behind the scenes stills gallery

[edit] Comparisons

Comparisons have been made between Peeping Tom and other significant films in this genre such as:

• 'Peeping Tom' and 'Psycho': Reinventing The Horror Film. Retrieved on 2006-11-05.
• Snuff said, comparing 8MM to Peeping Tom. Retrieved on 2006-11-05.
• Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut ... comparing Peeping Tom & Psycho. Retrieved on 2006-11-05.

[edit] Cultural influences

Mike Patton's band Peeping Tom, and its self-titled album, are named in tribute to this movie. ^[11]

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links