I’m here thanks to Martin Scorsese. His Powell and Pressburger documentary is a great watch, entertaining and informative. Most of the films covered, I’ve watched, but I’ve never before seen Peeping Tom. This is Powell without Pressburger and a radical departure from the films they made together. It’s rather sinister and salacious. Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Böhm) likes to murder people, women specifically and to film them screaming as they die. That sounds horrible doesn’t it and it is, but made in 1960, this has an almost Hitchcock tone to it. There’s no gore, it relies on the cinematic trick of what you don’t see. We’re in London, everything is stiff upper lip and wotnot, but there’s a seedy underbelly not far beneath the surface as the city’s starting to swing. This in essence is the hook. What’s sociably acceptable and what everyone gets up to behind closed doors… well aside the murdering bit. Mark is a loner. Awkward, he doesn’t fit in. He has a haunting air about him that distances him from both the respectable and the deviants. His solace is the camera. Photographing girls for the local soft porn pedalling newsagent, filming his secretive documentary, oh and yes the murdering. As serial killers go he’s rather likeable, hence me footnoting the murdering. He’s shy, interesting. Helen (Anna Massey) thinks so. She’s the neighbour downstairs, his tenant actually, although he’s very much the humble bohemian with his long overcoat and scooter, rather than gentrified landlord. This could be simple schlocky thriller stuff, but as we learn more about Mark and his past through Helen’s intrigue, there’s more to this than meets the eye. Vivian (Moira Shearer) likes him too. She wants to be a star, but Mark has other plans… and he does have a plan, he wants to be caught. The acting style is very much of its time and it’s more charming than anything else, seen through modern eyes. The whole thing is dramatically theatrical, with wonderfully overblown characters. Like Helen’s mother (Maxine Audley) who very nearly steals the show. Its slasher movie voyeurism was highly controversial on release. I can understand why, but 60 years on it plays really well. The truth is although it’s not perfect, it is really good and if snooty old critics couldn’t see that, their loss. It’s just a shame that it pretty much canned Powell’s career.
7/10
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