Peeping Tom

Peeping Tom (1960)
Director: Michael Powell
Writer: Leo Marks
Starring: Carl Boehm

When you think of the proud history of British film you can't help but to begin with their strongest genre, the snuff film. The UK has a strong tradition of making the most powerful films involving the killing of women, and leads the world market in these types of films. Powell's Peeping Tom honors that tradition by following Mark, a professional focus puller who is obsessed with cameras, taking a 16mm camera everywhere he goes.

We look at the films Mark makes through his viewfinder as he makes them and learn that he isn't quite the clean-cut, shy, person that we think he is. Faces of terror, screams inhabit his films. Mark is a killer. The film becomes really interesting from here - it could've been made as a horror film, but instead, we get to know the killer, we see what he does, why he does it, his history, we can sympathize and empathize with him. Instead of being a creepy movie where we're left in the dark to the identity of the killer and his motives, we know them right up front and begin to inhabit his brain.

Peeping Tom isn't about the typical Peeping Toms we've learned about in school, it's about those who like to watch anything. It doesn't matter if it's somebody on the street or somebody undressing, they just watch. Mark has this affliction because of his history of being watched by his father, his father watched, now he watches. The psychology in the film is strong, from dealing with parenting theory, to obsessions, to some interesting theories on fear, how it works, and what is the one thing that can cause the most fear in a person.

For such a fear obsessed movie, the film is not at all scary. We know how a lot of things will happen before they happen. Instead, we get to see what affects people. Does the camera's eye affect us more than a human's eye? When a person embraces a view are they just trying to put on a facade and hide even more from the camera?

Peeping Tom takes voyeurism and makes it seem reasonable in it's practice, it's something that can't be helped, but then it adds a sexual nature to it and makes it sinister. What gets explained to be ok gets to be explained to be not ok, and to be even worse than previously thought.

A fascinating movie about psychology and the mind of a madman. Definitely deserving of it's criterion treatment.

4/5
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